'Amethyst ... do you remember the Topaz?' Ramage asked.
Why, surely she must be one of Mr Yorke's ships - weren't all of them named after precious stones, sir?'
'Yes, but I don't know how many he has. A dozen or so, I think.'
'Well,' Southwick said, as though announcing his verdict after judging a case, 'I've seldom seen a ship in such good shape: I was going to comment that her owners didn't stint the master when it came to paint and ropework. So she could be one of his fleet. He'll be grateful to us.'
'So far all we've done is look at her,' Ramage said sourly. 'Are you sure about the number of guards in the ships?'
'Yes, four in each. What's Bowen report on the Earl of Dodsworth?'
'Eight guards for sixteen passengers.'
'Ah, Army officers going on leave! The privateersmen are wary of those in John Company's military service. A few wild subalterns will not take kindly to being prisoners.'
'Good thinking,' Ramage said, irritated that he had not worked it out for himself. 'But why not keep them on shore with the seamen?'
Southwick sniffed, a slightly patronizing sniff that Ramage, who could have answered his own question a moment after he had spoken it, knew only too welclass="underline" it said, without uttering a word, that 'old Southwick' knew most of the answers. He often did, too, which was why the sniff infuriated every officer in the Calypso.
Very well, the Company's military officers were being kept on board the Earl of Dodsworth because it was easier to guard prisoners locked in a cabin than kept in a tent among a few score seamen. The passenger cabins of a John Company ship were substantial, probably mahogany; the cabins of a man of war were canvas stretched over light wooden frames . . .
The bosun, lying comfortable along the barrel of the fourth gun on the starboard side, proffered his slate but Ramage, glimpsing the sprawling writing, said: 'Tell me in your own words.'
'Well, this Heliotrope –'he pronounced the name correctly, having listened to his orders from Aitken, but spoke it with the distaste of a bishop's wife referring at breakfast to an errant curate, '- has four privateersmen on board as guards, an' six passengers - two men and two women and two children, a boy an' a girl. Guards armed with cutlasses. No muskets. Perhaps pistols but I couldn't see any. Passengers kept aft - probably in their own cabins. They pump the ship once an hour for about ten minutes. All French ships leak, so it's nothing to worry about. Sails furled, sheets, tacks and braces rove... s'about all, sir.'
It was very good, considering the bosun had no telescope.
'Did they pump while the prisoners were on deck?'
'No, sir: they brought up the women and children first and exercised 'em: then pumped; then brought the men up. They're due to pump again any minute.'
The gunner, the only man in the ship Ramage disliked and regarded as incompetent, but did nothing about changing, had kept a sharp lookout on the remaining ship, the French Commerce. 'No prisoners brought up while I've been watching, sir. Four privateersmen just walking about and leaning on the taffrail, spitting. Not all at once; I've distinguished four different men. Seem to have no duties; one comes on deck and looks round, then I don't see anyone for half an hour.'
As they walked back to the quarterdeck, Aitken said to Ramage: 'The Earl of Dodsworth seems their prize of prizes, then the Amethyst, Heliotrope and Friesland rank equal.'
Roughly one guard to two hostages, Ramage noted. Tomás and Hart were not making idle threats about murdering them if necessary: each guard would have a pistol and a cutlass...
He left Aitken on the quarterdeck watching Martin's progress sounding towards the second rock. He saw the other two boats lying to grapnels off the beach, so the two surveying parties should be at work. Ramage sat down at his desk with a sigh and pulled his notes towards him. He wrote a second page, naming the five ships, and listing the number of passengers and guards. Then he added up the totals - forty passengers (seventeen women, twenty-one men and two children) and twenty-four guards.
Assuming the five ships had the usual number of officers and men, there would be sixty-five or seventy officers and men being guarded on shore, and given that there was no suitable building, this would be the biggest task for the privateersmen - unless . . . Ramage's stomach shrivelled at the idea: unless all those officers, petty officers and seamen had been warned that any attempt at escape would mean the massacre of the passengers. That would explain why the passengers were under guard in the ships and the crews on shore when the Calypso arrived. The passengers were already the hostages; it had taken no stroke of genius to tell the Calypso what they had already told the crews of their prizes.
Ramage was just realizing the hopelessness of his position when he thought of the second privateer, due in any day with more prizes. More ships, more passengers, more guards, and her own crew to reinforce the Lynx's men watching the prisoners on shore. There was no reason to suppose she would be less successful than the Lynx, so any day now there could be another five prizes here, with forty-eight guards watching eighty hostages . . . Enough privateersmen with enough hostages, Ramage realized - and wished he had gone on halfpay, as Gianna had wanted - to force the Calypso to surrender. And he knew, without giving it a moment's more thought, that the instant Tomás or Hart demanded the surrender of the Calypso as the price for not massacring eighty hostages, he would agree. He had no choice, although no court martial could ever agree because none of the captains forming the court would ever believe that Tomás and Hart would carry out their threat. One had to see both men's eyes to understand that: they were both outcasts from the human race by their own choice. In wartime, privateers with genuine letters of marque were permitted, but privateersmen who, when the peace came, made the coldblooded decision to become pirates and prey on ships of all nationalities, were turning their backs on civilization; they were quite deliberately striding into the jungle, and no naval captain sitting at a table in the great cabin of one of the King's ships listening to the evidence against Captain Ramage on several charges - he heard an echo of the crazy voice of the Invincible's captain - would understand, or even think of, the law of the jungle.
'But what made you think. Captain Ramage, that, ah, the privateersmen, would carry out their threat to murder the hostages?'
'The look in their eyes.'
'So you thereupon surrendered His Majesty's frigate the Calypso, and her ship's company?'
'Yes, sir."
'Because of the look in a privateersman's eye?'
It sounded ludicrous and it sounded unbelievable, and he could hear the knowing laughs of the other members of the court. There would be pressure, too, from the Honourable East India Company, who would probably be smarting from the loss of the Earl of Dodsworth - the underwriters might well not pay out for a ship lost to pirates in peacetime: Indiamen were armed to beat off pirates in the Eastern seas, but the Earl of Dodsworth did not expect to find an enemy this side of the Equator. Along the Malabar coast, yes, every John Company ship expected to find pirates there, but not in the middle of the South Atlantic.
There is only one way out of it, he thought miserably. Boarding parties will have to swim over on a dark night and deal with the guards.
Suddenly he sat up. There were enough swimmers in the ship's company. It might work - it depended how often the guards were inspected by people from the Lynx. It would take a day or two of observation to find out.