Ramage & the Rebels (13 page)

The French seemed to like renaming places. Genoa was now the Ligurian Republic, Holland the Batavian Republic, the Swiss were now inhabitants of the Helvetic Republic, while a group of Italian states round Bologna, Modena and Ferrara were now the Cisalpine Republic. From all accounts giving a new name was not the same as giving them their freedom …

Ramage turned to Aitken, who was the officer of the watch. “Pass at least two miles off Amsterdam,” he said. “We're being nosy, not provocative.”

Half an hour later they could see right into Amsterdam, neatly cut in half by the channel. Not quite in half, Ramage realized; the main part was on the Punda side—the Governor's residence, Parliament and most of the houses. On the other side, so quaintly called the same in Dutch, Otrabanda, it looked as though the merchants flourished. At the far end, where the small inland lake began, the privateers were lying at anchor. Aitken had counted nine, Southwick eight, the masthead lookouts ten, and Jackson and Orsini, sent up the mainmast at the rush with telescopes, confirmed that there were ten.

Southwick had been as puzzled as Ramage when Jackson had come down again and reported that most of the privateers looked as though they were laid up, or undergoing refits. There was no sign of sails; no squaresail yards were in sight. Nor, equally odd, was there any sign of activity on any of the privateers: except for two or three men standing at the rail of one of them, Jackson said, they seemed to be deserted.

Ramage had not known what to expect and for that reason had no plans. He turned to Aitken and said: “Continue running along the coast. The chart shows two or three bays where privateers could hide. Keep a sharp lookout—we might be able to surprise some of them at anchor.”

With that he went below to his cabin, glad of the shade. He sat down at his desk, reached up for the chart from the rack overhead, and spread it out in front of him. Ten privateers: that meant the Admiral's information was correct: Amsterdam was being used as a privateers' base. Ten privateers. But they were the only vessels in the harbour. Certainly they could have a dozen prizes anchored in that lake, out of sight, but those privateers looked as though they were laid up. Why should the sails have been taken off? It was easy enough to do, but surprising. There might be a good sailmaker there in Amsterdam who was doing some major repairs on a single privateer's sails—even making new ones, because the Trade winds were hard on sail cloth and the sun and showers rotted the stitching. Would all ten have their sails on shore in the sailmaker's loft at the same time? No, there'd be no point: the sailmaker (at best a couple of men and three apprentices) could not work on ten suits of sails at once, and no privateer would risk having his sails on shore a day longer than necessary. He'd bring the sails over, wait for them to be repaired and take them back. If they were not on shore, then the sails certainly could be stowed below, out of the glare and heat of the sun and rain—not that it rained much on these islands: they existed only because there were wells providing fresh water.

Was it likely, he asked himself, that only two or three privateersmen would come on deck to watch a British frigate and schooner sail across the harbour entrance—something that happened perhaps once in three or four months? Two or three out of—well, more than five hundred men? Where were the rest of them? Some could be on shore, filling water casks or collecting provisions from the chandlers. A few dozen might be out at the salt pans, filling carts or bags with salt to preserve meat. Some might be in the brothels—though men and women preferred a siesta at this time of day. But two or three men … The privateers were not laid up for lack of targets, surely? He thought of the 24 dead in the
Tranquil,
murdered by the crew of the
Nuestra Señora de Antigua.

The Marine sentry at the door called out that Mr Southwick wished to see him.

The Master looked worried and without any preamble said: “We're losing a lot of ground to leeward, sir. With these light winds, and the west-going current, it'll take us a long time to beat back to Amsterdam … Leastways, I'm reckoning you want to stay close to Saint Anna's Bay …”

It was Southwick's duty to mention such things; as Master of the
Calypso,
the navigation of the ship was his responsibility. But Ramage was angry with himself for reasons beyond his comprehension: certainly he had not been sure what he expected to find here in Amsterdam; he knew now only that those ten privateers, possibly all laid up, made nonsense of his orders. None of these privateers was going to put to sea with two British warships in the offing. And no British warship would get within a thousand yards of the harbour entrance by day or night without being smashed to kindling by the guns of those forts. No bluff or subterfuge could stop them firing.

However, Ramage thought ruefully, it is not a situation that William Foxe-Foote, Vice-Admiral of the Blue and one of the Members of Parliament for Bristol, as well as being “Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Ships and Vessels upon the Jamaica Station,” could visualize, understand or accept. Particularly understand, and especially accept …

Ramage gestured to Southwick to sit down in the armchair that was secured against the ship rolling by a light chain from the underside of the seat to an eyebolt in the deck planking. The Master put his hat down beside him and ran his fingers through his hair, which was now matted with perspiration, and the mark of the hatband across the top of his forehead gave him a curiously puzzled appearance.

“Southwick, have you any idea what these privateers are doing?” Ramage asked.

Southwick shrugged his shoulders and gave one of his prodigious sniffs. “With respect to Admiral Foxe-Foote, sir, all those privateers look just as if the owners have gone bankrupt. They look just like those old fishing smacks you see abandoned on the saltings along the bank of the Medway. Paint peeling, slack rigging, and one windy night the masts will go over the side. Not that I could see the rigging, of course; just the impression I had.”

Ramage nodded. “I don't think many of them have been to sea for a month or more.”

“No, sir, at least that. And no one on board any of ‘em. I saw maybe two or three men. Shipkeepers? Three men for ten privateers is not many. No, there's something damned odd about it all. Could there be more privateers at Bonaire, or perhaps Aruba?”

“Why?” Ramage asked. “Why would privateers be at islands where there is no decent harbour? At Bonaire they have to anchor on a sloping shelf. Why be there when Amsterdam is such a perfect harbour? Sheltered from the weather, defended by the forts, provisions and water available …”

“That's why I'm so puzzled,” Southwick admitted. “I expected to see half a dozen privateers, perhaps even a dozen, but all ready to go to sea. Perhaps one repairing damage and perhaps another replacing her standing and running rigging—but not ten like that. It's—well, almost ghostly, sir; as though yellow fever had killed every man on board as they were at anchor.”

For a moment Ramage thought of Amsterdam being in the grip of an epidemic of something like yellow fever, but plenty of people had been walking on the walls of the forts and in the few streets of Punda and Otrabanda when the
Calypso
passed. Southwick fluffed out his flowing white hair as it began to dry, making it look like a deck mop. “Your orders from the Admiral, sir. There's not much you can do about them.”

“There are ten privateers in Amsterdam,” Ramage reminded him.

Southwick sat bolt upright. “But you're not going to try to go in after them, are you, sir?”

Ramage grinned and waved to Southwick to relax in his chair. “Nor am I going to send in the boats at night: they probably have a chain boom across the entrance that they haul up at sunset. But it's going to be difficult to convince the Admiral …”

“Those privateersmen can't afford to eat, lying there at anchor,” Southwick pointed out. “They're all on a share-of-the-prize basis. With no pay, time in port is money lost. The shopkeepers will start wanting cash …”

“I've considered all that,” Ramage said mildly, “but would
you
sail in one of those privateers with a British frigate and a schooner waiting outside?”

“I might try on a dark night, sir.”

“Come, come,” Ramage chided, “it's never completely dark in the Tropics.”

“Hungry men get desperate!”

“The crew might, but don't forget that every privateer has an owner; and he's not going to lose his ship just because the men are hungry.”

“True, but I still don't understand it,” Southwick muttered. “Why are these beggars laid up here when we know others—Spanish, anyway—are at sea? Think of all the prizes they're missing.”

“That's just what I have been thinking about,” Ramage said, “and the only sensible explanation is that all the privateersmen are on shore doing something as profitable as being at sea, privateering. It obviously isn't selling fresh fruit in the market.”

Southwick slapped his knee, his face wrinkling into a broad grin. “I hadn't thought of that, sir. I wonder what the devil they
are
doing?”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “That's where I've come to a stop. You can be sure they aren't at a religious festival, nor are they sitting on the walls of the fort with fishing lines.”

“We can blockade the island for a week or two,” Southwick said. “Catch a few prizes ourselves. Question prisoners …”

“That's what I've decided. We have to provoke them into doing something. By ‘them' I mean the Dutch rather than the French. Capturing a Dutch merchantman as she arrives off Amsterdam could do the job, and stopping all trade between Curaçao and the Main might force the Governor to make the privateers sail to drive us off. As a squadron they might stand a chance in the dark, if the Governor puts on board as many soldiers as he can spare.”

Southwick was brightening: Ramage saw that the prospect of action was cheering him up, having the same effect as an alcoholic sighting a bottle of spirits. Yet sitting there he still looked like a rural bishop, except for his eyes, which took on the glint of the owner of a knacker's yard. He reached for his hat. “I'll be—” he broke off as, high above them, a masthead lookout hailed the deck, his voice too faint to penetrate the cabin. They heard Aitken answer, and both Ramage and Southwick made for the door. On deck Aitken, looking puzzled, walked quickly towards Ramage as he reached the top of the companion-way.

“The lookout reports a lot of smoke several miles inland and we think we can hear occasional musket shots, sir. Very faint, and it might be duckhunters or something. But we can't see the smoke from down here—yet, anyway.”

“New smoke, or something that's been burning for some time?”

Aitken looked crestfallen. “I forgot to ask, sir.”

He stepped back a few paces and put the speaking-trumpet to his mouth, bellowing: “Aloft, there!”

“Mainmast lookout, sir.”

“That smoke—is it a new fire just started or have you only just seen it?”

“‘Snew, sir: increasing now, like houses catching fire. White and black smoke.”

Ramage looked across at the land. The arid flatness of the eastern end of the island was beginning to merge into rolling hills getting higher and higher as they approached the big peak of Sint Christoffelberg, ever-increasing waves suddenly turned to stone as they lapped the base of a pinnacle.

He saw a fleck of smoke a moment before Southwick and Aitken pointed and exclaimed. Smoke was common enough among the Caribbean islands: most of them spent more than half the year tinder-dry; the sun's rays concentrated by a broken bottle, a hunter's carelessness with a campfire, the sparks from a charcoal burner's crude furnace—all could, and frequently did, set a hillside ablaze in a fire that only died when the wind dropped at night, or mercifully backed or veered a few points to drive the flames back on themselves. But smoke
and
the sound of musket shots: that was a very different matter, and he was certain he could hear some distant popping, and Aitken now had the speaking-trumpet to his ear, using it intently so that the young First Lieutenant looked like a deaf seafarer straining to hear a mermaid singing a siren song from beneath a palm tree on the beach.

The brisk Trade wind was dispersing the smoke; instead of billowing clouds it was more of a haze by the time Ramage could see it from his low vantage-point on the quarterdeck and Southwick lumbered over to crouch over the azimuth compass to take bearings. The entrance to Amsterdam, still in sight astern, the peak of Sint Christoffelberg, the next headland to the west, and the smoke. By plotting the first three he would be able to establish the ship's exact position; then drawing in the bearing of the smoke, he would be able to tell Ramage approximately where the fire was burning.

He hurried below with the slate on which he had noted the bearings and was back again within four or five minutes to tell Ramage: “The smoke is coming from somewhere about half-way between the villages of Soto and a place called Sint Willebrordus. About eleven miles west of Amsterdam. Can it be cane fields burning?”

“There's no sugar cane on this island. And cane doesn't burn with a popping like muskets. It can only be houses.”

“Deck there! Foremasthead lookout!”

Startled, Ramage, Aitken and Southwick looked forward. The voice, almost disembodied, sounded excited, and Aitken answered: “Deck here.”

“Sail on the larboard bow, sir, and I think I can see land beyond it. Might be a cloud but the bearing stays the same.”

“What type of ship?”

“Can't tell, sir; she's still hull down below the horizon, but I think she's steering towards us.”

Aitken looked round for Jackson, handed him the telescope and pointed aloft. Without a word the American made for the shrouds and began climbing the foremast.