This had been such an outrageous suggestion that Ramage had immediately told Aitken, who had escorted them below, to see them to their boats. Taken aback by this treatment, both men had stood there grumbling in a truculent duet until Ramage, from his cot, had held up his hand for silence. Gesturing to the Dutch captain of the Friesland, who spoke good English, he had then pointed to Aitken.
'This officer swam alone in the night to board your ship secretly and warn your passengers and, when his men followed him, they captured the privateersmen and freed your passengers, eight of them. If I'd helped the Lynx people capture your ship, I'm damned if I see why I'd risk my own men freeing her.' He pointed at the Frenchman, 'I swam to your ship and my men followed. This -' he raised his bandaged arm '- is my souvenir of that. All your passengers were freed.
'A day after that my ship destroyed the privateers' vessel and you were all rescued from the comparative safety of the prison camp. So your passengers are safe, your ships undamaged, and now the pair of you have the gross impertinence to imply that I, or the Royal Navy, or my government, were in league with the Lynx.
'Pray tell me,' he said quietly, 'are you responsible for the French and Dutchmen we've found among the Lynx's guards? One of my officers has drawn up a rough muster list for the Lynx by questioning the survivors - the guards we captured - and it seems she had one hundred and ten men altogether. Nineteen of them were British, forty-one French and twenty-seven Dutch. The rest were Spanish or from various other countries. So I bid you good day, gentlemen.'
Both captains were immediately apologetic, pretending they did not notice Aitken waiting to escort them up on deck. Would Captain Ramage favour the passengers of the Heliotrope by taking dinner with them? Not to be outdone by his French companion, the Dutch captain of the Friesland gave his invitation. Ramage thanked them gravely and Aitken led them out. By contrast the French master of the Commerce hurried over with a case of his best wine, alarmed to hear of Ramage's wounds and swearing that the wine he brought, from his own part of France, was famous for restoring the blood.
The Heliotrope was the first of the ships to resume her voyage - she was bound for Honfleur - and she was followed next day by the Commerce, for Nantes. The Friesland's captain visited Ramage again, still apologetic and asking for a copy of the terms of the peace treaty, and after discussing it with Ramage and displaying a remarkable realism as well as frankness, sailed for the Channel, cursing that the delay caused by the privateers meant that he would arrive in winter.
The Amethyst was bound for Calcutta, and her master decided to fill extra water casks, to make up for the amount used while at anchor. He was pleased to find two boats from the Calypso sent to help him.
While the merchant ships, except for the Earl of Dodsworth, prepared to resume their voyages and sailed, the surveyors continued their task of scaling down Trinidade's length, breadth and height to a large sheet of parchment. The masons and Renwick and his men had blasted and dug out the sites for the batteries and then built the floors, walls, magazines, kitchens and other outbuildings with the bricks the Calypso had brought out as extra ballast.
The botanist, Edward Garret, took parties of seamen to three flat areas he had inspected and set them to work with spades, forks and hoes, finally reporting to Ramage that all the Irish and sweet potatoes were planted.
Ramage had been disappointed to find that Wilkins did not visit him. Lying in his cot or on the settee in his day cabin, he would have enjoyed chatting with the artist. However, one day he discovered that Wilkins was being taken over to the Earl of Dodsworth by one of the survey boats on its way to the shore, and collected in the late afternoon when it returned. Neither Aitken nor Southwick seemed to want to discuss it.
Why should an artist want to spend his days on another ship? Presumably to visit someone. Who? Presumably a woman - he was a presentable, handsome and lively young man. But the only unattached woman - Ramage still did not know whether she was married or unmarried - was Sarah. Was Wilkins seeing Sarah?
The first time he thought about it he felt sick with jealousy: his throat seemed to knot, his arm hurt and he clenched his fists. Various of Wilkins's remarks took on different meanings; the devil had wheedled Aitken into providing him with transport. And - he finally admitted to himself - perhaps Wilkins was seeing her quite openly: he would have no inkling of Ramage's feelings for her, so he could not be accused of being deceitful. Well, perhaps not deceitful, but he was hardly being open about it.
Then, going hot with embarrassment, he recalled that Sarah and her mother visited the Calypso daily, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, and always during these visits, which often lasted a couple of hours, Wilkins was over on board the East Indiaman.
Well, what was the fellow doing? Certainly he had done some good paintings of Trinidade and its flora and fauna. The fact was that the island lacked much interest, and Wilkins had concentrated on the shore and the sea lapping it. He had done a series of remarkable oils showing in detail the main seashells, introducing Ramage to a new world of colour and beauty he had never dreamed of. In fact one of the main reasons he was impatient to be able to walk properly was that he wanted to join Wilkins, who had been swimming and diving on the reefs and among the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs, collecting even more shells. The after part of the ship reeked with the smell of turpentine because so many of his canvases were propped up drying. Anyone visiting the frigate, Southwick had commented, would think her rigging was being treated with turpentine, not Stockholm tar.
Bowen had long since agreed that Ramage's leg was not broken: the swelling was caused by the bruising of the muscle. Finally he agreed to remove the bandages and look at the limb again. Bowen was a firm believer in covering a wound and leaving it alone for as long as possible. Uncovering it and exposing it to the noxious vapours in the air, he maintained, was the root cause of gangrene.
Sarah and her mother arrived an hour after Bowen had inspected the leg and pronounced it sufficiently recovered to be without bandages, providing Ramage kept it covered with a silk stocking and was careful not to bang it. The cutlass wound on the arm, inspected at the same time, was healing well - entirely due, in Bowen's opinion, to the prompt cleansing by Lady Sarah the moment Ramage had emerged from the sea.
The Marchioness enjoyed her daily visits to the Calypso; it was, she told Southwick, a most pleasant way of chaperoning her daughter. She and Southwick and Bowen formed a little coterie at the after end of the quarterdeck, under the awning. Ramage's one armchair was always brought up for the Marchioness, and the master and surgeon would, as soon as she raised her eyebrows and regretted there were no seats for them, produce canvas-backed chairs, and sit round her.
Sarah and Ramage, in the meantime, would stroll back and forth across the quarterdeck, and occasionally along the maindeck and on to the fo'c'sle, while talking of a dozen subjects. All too often, Ramage found himself making comparisons with Gianna. It was quite unintended, and he remembered vividly the first time. Somehow the subject of music had come up and they began discussing composers.
Sarah mentioned her favourites and they were Ramage's, and he was relieved because although Gianna did not dislike music she was oblivious to it. Now here was a woman with whom he could - for a brief while, anyway - discuss this symphony and that, each of them humming sections and then arguing, or playing the game of naming a piece, with the all too frequent answer from Ramage with his acknowledged bad memory: 'I know it well enough but can't remember the name.'