Ramage's Mutiny (15 page)

On board the
Calypso
the guns were run out, the water which had been splashed across the deck was drying quickly on the hot wood of the planking, and the grains of sand sprinkled over it to give the men a good foothold became myriads of tiny mirrors reflecting the sunlight.

The sea had the dark blue, almost mauve, of the tropical ocean, the sky, with the sun high, was a harsher blue, hinting at infinite distance which would be revealed when darkness once again brought back the stars. And all the time the sun beat down on the ship, making the deck planking uncomfortably hot and heating metal until it was unpleasant to touch. But there was enough breeze now to keep the men cool, once they had finished the heavy work of loading and running out the guns.

Ramage walked the width of the quarterdeck swearing to himself that he would not look across at the schooner again until he had made five traverses. Impatience was a tiring and pointless fault, but one he found it very hard to eradicate. One of the few advantages of being made post was that you could indulge yourself more frequently … But now Aitken was dealing with the Jonathan, pumping him dry of information about Santa Cruz, with luck.

The
William and Henrietta
of Boston. Shipowners along the east coast of America were no more imaginative than their counterparts across the other side of the Atlantic. Who was William, and was Henrietta his wife? Or had someone named the ship after his father and mother? He did not give a jot, but speculating about such nonsense passed a few more minutes and by then he had made six traverses of the deck, so he could look again.

He put the glass to his eye. Aitken was on deck again, and folding something and putting it in the canvas pouch he had used to protect the list of known Jocastas from spray. The Marines had not moved and now Aitken was signalling over the side to the boat.

No mutineers! It was as much the wish not to find mutineers as the hope of discovering the latest information about Santa Cruz that was making him impatient for Aitken's return. He did not want to be a member of another court martial trying one of Wallis's victims. Victims was an odd way to think of murderers and mutineers but it was more of a judgement—a diagnosis, Bowen would call it—than an expression of sympathy.

Now the
Calypso
's boat was clear of the schooner. The
William and Henrietta
was a graceful vessel, a sweeping sheer lifting to a high bow. She was painted a dark blue with a broad white strake, an unusual colour for an American merchantman: they were usually black or green. Then the headsails, which had been backed, were sheeted home and for a minute or two the
William and Henrietta
's bow paid off before she fathered way.

Another neutral ship stopped and boarded; another routine dozen-word entry in the log, one of hundreds made every year by ships of the Royal Navy. While Ramage's thoughts roamed, Aitken arrived to stand before him, grinning cheerfully. Startled, Ramage glanced round to see that the boat was already hooked on and ready to be hoisted on board.

Aitken unloaded the pouch. “No mutineers on board, sir, but the master was friendly enough: he left Santa Cruz early yesterday morning and he's bound for St Augustine, in Florida. Cargo of hides—phew, and do they stink!”

Ramage waited with growing impatience. The captain had to be cool, unruffled, patient, the fountain of wisdom … which meant that the Captain could not at this moment tell Aitken to stop rambling and report on Santa Cruz.

“Hides, eh?” he said casually. “Of course, they have a lot of cattle along this coast. Poor quality hides, if I remember correctly: some kind of fly that attacks the skin and causes sores.”

“Maybe so, sir,” Aitken said, “but the master tells me they fetch a good price in America.”

“Indeed? What other news from our American friend?”

“Nothing, sir. He says he always finds a west-going current of between one and two knots from here all the way up to the lee of Grenada, which is what we'd reckoned anyway.”

“Quite.”

“And the
Jocasta,
sir: she's still there and has her yards crossed and sails bent on, but apparently there's barely a hundred seamen on board her now. She was full of troops when he arrived, but they were suddenly taken off and marched inland with some of the town garrison. He reckoned more than five hundred of them altogether. There was a lot of talk of trouble up in the hills at a place called”—he paused and took a piece of paper from his pocket—”called Caripe. I don't know if that's the way to pronounce it. Anyway, there are hundreds of Indians living up in the mountains who are always making trouble for the Spaniards, and they've just massacred the garrison at this place, Caripe. The only troops available to send after ‘em were those on board the
Jocasta
and some of the garrison.”

Aitken's voice was flat. Did he understand the significance of the news he was relating? Ramage, not realizing that Aitken was copying him, was far from sure, but he was thankful for those unknown Indians who, revolting for reasons he could only guess at, had as if by magic removed three hundred soldiers from the
Jocasta.
That was as good as doubling the number of men he had in the
Calypso
… Then he remembered the forts. They were the threat; compared with them the prospect of three hundred more or less on board the
Jocasta
was of little account. Smile, Ramage told himself; Eames was beaten long before he reached Santa Cruz, beaten by a look at the chart.

“A fortunate coincidence,” Ramage commented. “A pity we can't help our Indian allies.”

Aitken nodded as he peered into his canvas pouch. “And then there's this, sir.” He took out a large sheet of paper which had been folded twice. “The master copied it for me from the one he uses. He vouches for the soundings because he's taken them himself.”

Ramage turned his back to the wind. The paper was a good chart of Santa Cruz and the entrance with the forts marked in, and on the windward side of the large rectangular lagoon at the inner end of the channel was drawn the
Jocasta,
showing that she was secured fore and aft to buoys.

He handed it back to Aitken. “You'd better give that to Southwick. It's a great deal better than anything we have.”

Ramage resumed his pacing. Even a perfunctory look at the new chart did not alter the major characteristics of Santa Cruz: it was still a square lagoon half a mile inland at the end of a channel which began as a narrow slot through the cliffs, although the hills on either side quickly sloped down so that Santa Cruz itself and the land round the lagoon was flat.

The
Jocasta
was at the eastern end of the lagoon; the town at the western. And high above the middle of the southern side was the Castillo de Santa Fé, taking its name from the high mountain, Pico de Santa Fé, which stood inland like a giant beacon, a landmark visible for twenty miles, though one which Eames's chart neglected to mention.

An American master and a group of Indians: Captain Ramage of the
Calypso
was finding some improbable allies. He turned to find Aitken waiting to speak to him.

“I forgot to mention, sir,” he began apologetically, “that the American said there is a Spanish
guarda costa
patrolling the coast. He saw her steering westwards as he left Santa Cruz. They caught a Dutch ship smuggling a few weeks ago, so they're on the watch.”

Ramage nodded and resumed his pacing. By now the boat had been hoisted on board and was being stowed, men waiting with the canvas cover that kept off the sun in the eternal fight to stop the heat drying out the planking. The
Calypso
's guns were being unloaded and run in; a head pump was already gurgling as men swabbed down the decks to wash away the sand. The
William and Henrietta
was a couple of miles away and sailing fast. There was a lot to be said for a schooner rig, Ramage thought; you soaked up to windward like water through paper.

Wagstaffe, who was officer of the deck, came up to report that the boat was secured, the guns run in, and the ship ready to get under way again.

“Carry on,” Ramage said, and went down to his cabin, sending a seaman to tell Aitken and Southwick to report to him with the charts. He slumped down on the settee, pitching his hat on to the desk. He was a hundred miles from Santa Cruz, and had not a single positive idea in his head. He had hoped that after leaving English Harbour a plan would come to mind; that once he was clear of the trial and all the petty irritations inflicted on a ship in harbour, he would suddenly find he had an answer to the problem of cutting out the
Jocasta.
Instead he had become more certain that it was impossible. The only possible chance was to send in the boats at night; rely on boarding parties creeping along the channel past the forts and seizing the
Jocasta
and sailing her out. This meant assuming that the Spanish sentries would be asleep.

It also meant he had to wait for a southerly wind—the only wind that would let the
Jocasta
sail out. But with Santa Cruz surrounded by mountains and hills, one could never be sure from out to sea what the wind direction would be inside the channel: eddies round a hill and gusts rolling down the side of a mountain could change the wind direction in a given spot by ninety degrees. An east wind at the entrance could mean a south wind inside the lagoon. A north wind at the entrance could mean an east wind in the channel. And the
Jocasta
would have only the survivors of the boarding parties to man her and sail her out under the fire of three forts which, with all the noise going on, would be wide awake and ready to sink the frigate before she was halfway down the channel. The boats could not tow her out, he thought bitterly, since none would survive for long enough …

Eames had come and looked at the problem and gone back to tell the Admiral it could not be done. It was not a question of courage; it was a problem of wind directions and the courses that a ship could steer; of the amount of punishment a ship could take from dozens of guns firing down at ranges of a few score yards. Now thanks to the American chart, there was less risk of grounding on a shoal but that was his only advantage over Eames …

If he decided on towing out the
Jocasta
he had to allow for the fact that the boats (rowed by the survivors, and those not needed on board the frigate) could not possibly tow her at more than two knots, probably less. The channel was half a mile long so it would take a quarter of an hour to get to the entrance, and the forts there could keep up a fire for another fifteen minutes at least after she had reached the open sea, even if it was a dark night. The
Calypso
could not wait close in to take over the tow: she would be taking a big risk if she tried to help from half a mile out to sea.

It couldn't be done; no amount of talking could change that. Eames would be in the clear although he had not even tried; Captain Ramage would be the man who attempted but failed to carry out the Admiralty's orders. Admiral Davis might even explain away Eames's visit by saying it was a reconnaissance …

The sentry at the door called: “Mr Aitken, sir, and Mr Southwick.”

The two men came into the cabin, Southwick carrying a roll of charts. Ramage stood up and went to the desk, throwing his hat across to the settee. “Let's have the American chart here.”

“It's a good chart,” Southwick said gloomily and shaking his head, “and all it tells us is—” he broke off and shrugged his shoulders. “I can't see how we can do anything without losing both ships.”

Aitken was watching Ramage and clearly expected his Captain to smile and contradict Southwick. Instead Ramage looked down at the chart and said: “I can't either. How about you?” he asked the Scot.

“I—er, well, sir, we'll probably lose one ship.”

“Ah, there you are, all you Scots are the same,” Southwick said with a sniff. “Too damned mean to lose two!”

“We mustn't be too generous with the King's property,” Ramage chided, and once again Aitken remembered the meeting in Captain Ramage's cabin on board the
Juno
before the battle off Martinique, when the Captain was facing the prospect of fighting a French squadron with only two frigates. He still had not got used to Captain Ramage's manner, and Southwick's was just as bad. Here they were, faced with impossible orders, and both of them joking. He supposed there was some sense in it. If the Captain and his officers walked round the ship with long faces before a battle, the men would think it hopeless and would not display the kind of reckless bravado that Captain Ramage seemed to inspire with that truly diabolical grin he wore at the prospect of gunfire. Better die joking than grumbling! But with just the three of them in the cabin and a sentry on the door, was it necessary to keep up the play-acting?

At that moment Aitken realized that it was not play-acting: he saw Ramage looking down at the chart and guessed that he had long ago weighed up all the prospects. If the Captain could still laugh and joke after that, then he had every right to expect his First Lieutenant to be cheerful as well. Southwick must have been born with a grin on that chubby red face of his, and with an irreverent attitude towards just about anything that other men took seriously—including going into battle and getting killed.

Southwick jabbed at the chart, running his finger along until it reached the eastern end of the lagoon, near where the
Jocasta
was moored. “Perhaps we could land men farther up the coast and let ‘em attack overland.”

“If they didn't break their necks falling over precipices on the way. These are mountains, you know, not hills—they'd be in fine shape after they'd swum out to the
Jocasta.
They could paddle round her and hurl abuse—their powder would be wet, so abuse would be their only weapon.”

“But, sir,” Southwick protested, “there are bound to be boats—fishermen tie ‘em up to piers and that sort of thing.”