Ramage and the Freebooters

'Don't think so, sir,' he said cheerfully, forgetting his Captain's dislike of vague answers.

'Either you have or you haven't Chart, sextant, tables, almanack?'

'Got them all, sir.'

'Latest position from Mr Southwick, course to steer, chronometer checked with La Merlette's?' 'All done, sir.'

'Ensign, set of flags, rockets, false fires...?'

'All on board, sir.'

'Very well. We'll be in sight for much of the night, so don't be afraid to send up a rocket if you've forgotten anything or find you can't manage.'

'Aye aye, sir,' Appleby answered patiently, and Ramage realized he sounded like a mother fussing the first time her son left home for school.

'Good luck, then, and don't forget to salute the Admiral if you find him in Barbados!'

Half an hour later the Triton's boat was back and it was being hoisted on board, La Merlette began setting sail and getting under way. As Ramage watched, the surgeon came up and commented:

'Appleby's first command I He must be excited!'

'I suppose so,' Ramage grunted. 'He's the dullest dog I've ever met. Has no—no push, if you know what I mean.'

The surgeon nodded. 'Still, he tries—and he's very young.'

'Yes, about fourteen months younger than L'

'I beg your pardon, sir, I didn't------'

Ramage laughed. 'It's a compliment, Bowen.'

'This French captain,' Bowen said, hastily changing the subject. 'What son of man is he? I mean, how can someone trade in human lives? It seems—well, against everything their Revolution was supposed to stand for.'

'I've been wondering the same thing. He reminds me of a typical French grocer: cheerful, fat and sharp as a needle.'

Bowen said, 'I must admit I'm an Abolitionist, sir. I've never done anything about supporting Wilberforce, but I admire his work.'

'So do I. At this very moment I feel like resigning my commission and offering him my services.'

'A laudable spirit, if I may say so, sir,' Bowen said seriously. 'But at the moment the country faces worse enemies than slavers. While we condemn a cruel slaver we mustn't forget the first three years of the French Revolution saw more cruelty performed by Frenchmen against Frenchmen in the streets of Paris alone than there's been in the Bight of Benin in the last fifty years.'

Ramage nodded, thinking of the thousands who'd been led to the guillotine merely because they had been born in the upper or middle classes, not because they opposed the Revolution. And they'd been followed by hundreds of people falsely denounced to the Directory by their enemies to pay off old scores.

'Well, one way we can find out what the Frenchman thinks is for me to invite him to dine with me tonight. The idea isn't very appealing—I'd sooner heave him over the side. But it's customary for the Captain to make such an invitation—though hardly to a slaver.'

The Surgeon did not try to hide his interest, 'Perhaps you would join me, Bowen. I can't ask South-wick as he'll be on watch.'

*

The French captain, Jean-Louis Marais, spoke good English, ate heartily (though hinting that a clove of garlic would have improved the meat) and sniffed delicately at the brandy. His chubby face was non-committal; then he glanced over the top of the glass and said:

'Good—yes. But M'sieur Ramage, I hope you won't think me impolite if I regret that I forgot to make you a present of my spirit locker before we parted company with La Merlette?' Ramage, who found himself liking the Frenchman's irrepressible cheerfulness—he could keep grinning within a few hours of finding his ship captured and himself a prisoner of war—couldn't resist saying: 'I hope you won't think me impolite, M'sieur Marais, but by that time it was hardly yours to give...'

'Touche! But your King wouldn't have begrudged it'

'I fear he would; in fact his regulations particularly forbid taking anything out of a captured ship until she has been "adjudged lawful prize" in some Admiralty court------'

'A barbarous regulation!' Marais exclaimed. 'Why 'Another says that "None of the officers, mariners or other persons on board her shall be stripped of their clothes, or in any sort pillaged..."' Ramage added dryly. 'Now that is barbarous.'

'My shirt is of little value, but my heart is of pure gold.'

'We'll have that, then—don't you agree, Bowen?'

The surgeon nodded. 'Yes—I can remove it without spoiling the shirt.'

'Ah, what an evening,' Marais said, still sniffing the brandy between sentences. 'A good dinner, good company— and a good surgeon to do whatever the host requires, quickly and painlessly!'

Bowen said evenly, 'Since you owned a slaver, I imagine not only your heart is made of gold.'

'You overestimate the profit,' Marais said blandly, 'and you natter me. I regret I am not the owner—was not the owner,' he corrected himself. 'Merely the captain.'

'But surely it's a profitable trade,' Ramage said.

'It's a gamble. When you win, you make a lot of money. When you lose, you lose heavily. There's no—how do you say? No "happy medium".'

'But on a round voyage surely you can hedge your bet?' Ramage asked. 'There's profit on the goods you carry from France to the Cape Coast, and profit in carrying sugar, spice and rum from the West Indies to France. Surely your gamble is only from the Cape Coast to the West Indies with the slaves?'

'True,' said Marais. 'But that's also where the major profit is. Don't forget these are fast ships, well-equipped and splendidly built. You saw there's little cargo space—no depth in the holds. And the crews have to be large and need to be paid very well—twice as much as in merchantmen. So for two thirds of a round voyage—from France to the Cape Coast, then from the West Indies back to France —they are expensive and half of them unnecessary.'

'What's the usual profit on a slave?' Bowen asked bluntly.

Marais shrugged his shoulders. 'M'sieur Bowen, be thankful that in the world of medicine you are never concerned with the words "net" and "gross". But a fair question deserves a fair answer. We don't buy the slaves with cash—

it's all bartering with the goods we carry out from France. But it works out at—forgive me, I must change the coinage— yes, about twenty-five guineas a slave: that's what we pay the chiefs and traders for a male. About fifteen guineas for a female. And we sell males at'—he paused, changing French louts into English money—'between fifty and sixty guineas each, providing we are among the first slavers in after the hurricane season ends or the last in before it starts. So our gross profit is between twenty-five and thirty-five guineas for each slave. But ten per cent might the on the voyage— it's rarely as high as that, incidentally—or we might arrive within a week of another slaver, in which case naturally the market price is lower.'

Bowen was obviously both horrified and fascinated by the way Marais discussed the slaves as if they were sacks of sugar or puncheons of rum.

'I don't see how you can make a loss?'

Marais' eyes looked up at the deckhead, shrugging his shoulders and holding out his hands, palms uppermost.

'M'sieur Bowen, I would like you as a backer. If I had a ship but no money to finance a voyage, I wish I could meet you and persuade you to take shares!'

'Why?' Bowen asked innocently.

Marais was serious now: the sharp little eyes focused on the surgeon, the palms of his hands were flat on the table, shoulders hunched forward. The lamp swinging in its gimbals on the bulkhead threw shadows which changed his face from that of a jolly grocer to the captain of a slaver used to dealing with desperate situations which needed desperate measures.

'Take your field, M'sieur Bowen, medicine. The Cape Coast is the unhealthiest place in the world. I often have to take my ship thirty miles up rivers to collect my cargo—in itself a great risk to the ship. I've read the burial service over more bodies consigned to those rivers than ever at sea. I sail from France with a crew of thirty-five—because I need twenty left alive for the passage from the Cape Coast to the West Indies. Many times I've made a passage with only a dozen... The rest have died of sicknesses for which there is no cure, only a death of the most painful kind. When you came in sight,' he said to Ramage, 'only twenty of the thirty five who left France had survived: fifteen died in the Bight of Benin—one stabbed by a treacherous slave-trader, the rest from sickness.'