Ramage's Devil

Already the Château was dropping astern fast and Ramage watched the irregular shape of Fort de Delec. Distance was always hard to estimate in the darkness, but a mile? At night an object usually seemed closer - so to the French gunners the Murex would seem to be just within range. Just? Well within range, and Sarah murmured: 'I imagine Frenchmen staring along the barrels of guns...'

It seemed to be tempting fate to make a reassuring comment, and anyway she was not frightened. 'If they're going to open fire, it'll be in the next two or three minutes,' he said.

She held his arm in an unexpected gesture, and he was startled to find she was trembling. 'Will it look bad if I go below if they start shooting?'

He gripped her hand. 'Of course not. But it will be more frightening.'

'More frightening? I don't understand.'

'Dearest, if you stay on deck and see where the shot fall, you'll see there's no danger. If you go below you'll be waiting for the next shot to come through the deck and knock your head off!'

'I feel cold and shaky all of a sudden,' she said. 'Not frightened exactly. Apprehensive, perhaps.'

'When you shoot a man with a pistol you usually feel shaky afterwards,' Ramage said dryly, and added: 'I feel cold and shaky every time after I've been in action. I think everyone does.'

He looked up at Fort de Delec again. He felt he could see down the muzzles of the guns. Yes, there was the straight line of the walls; there were the embrasures. The moon had risen high enough now that he knew he would see the antlike movement of people if the guns were being loaded and trained round. It was a confounded nuisance commanding a ship which had no nightglass and no telescopes. No log or muster book for that matter - the telescopes had presumably been looted, and all the ship's papers would have been taken away by the French authorities. And charts - well, the only relevant one he had glanced at by lantern light just before getting under way, 'A Draught of the Road and Harbour of Brest with the adjacent Coast', must have been copied from a captured French one, but even then gave only one line of soundings from the town of Brest right along the Gullet, stopping as it reached the first of the three rocks, Mengam, and the man at the lead could be calling out twenty fathoms amidships as the bow hit the rock.

Another couple of minutes and they would tack again and then he wanted plenty of lookouts. With luck he would be able to leave Mengam safely to one side so that on the next tack to the northwest he could pass close to the last of the three rocks, which was in fact a small reef appropriately named Les Fillettes.

The Cornouaille Battery was silent, but that was to be expected: a boat would have to be sent over to the Camaret peninsula to raise the alarm, although they would pick it up from the other forts. This next tack would bring them within range of Fort de Mengam. Was the fort named after its silent ally in the middle of the Gullet, or the other way about?

He lifted the speaking trumpet as Sarah murmured: 'Anyone raising the alarm at these forts and batteries would use the same road we rode along that afternoon from Pointe St Mathieu.'

'Now my dear, you can understand my interest in the number of guns each of them mounted.'

'You didn't explain,' she said.

'I'm always interested in French forts. I hardly expected we'd be sailing out in these circumstances!'

She shivered and turned to look back at the town and harbour. 'No, you were hoping eventually to sail your own ship in, on some wild escapade.'

'Yes,' he admitted, 'one never ignores a chance to learn about an enemy, but I prefer having my wife beside me!'

'You are being more polite than a new husband needs to be: I am a nuisance!'

He began shouting orders through the speaking trumpet and once again the Murex's bow swung across the eye of the wind to the southwest: once again straining men hauled at the sheets and braces to trim the topsails. If only he could set the courses as well; then with more than double the amount of canvas drawing the brig would be out of the Gullet and into the Atlantic, passing the Pointe St Mathieu to starboard and the shoals to larboard off the Camaret peninsula, like a stoat after a rabbit.

He walked up to the mainmast, partly to leave Swan on his own and help him gain a confidence which had probably been badly battered by the mutiny, and partly to place extra lookouts. He called for Auguste, Albert and Louis.

'You know the Mengam?' he asked.

'Yes, captain, I was just coming to warn you: it is very near.'

'And the one beyond, and then Les Fillettes?'

'Yes, I know them all; I have fished around them dozens of times. In fact the Mengam is fine on the bow. You - yes, you can see it. Look ...'

He stood beside Ramage, who saw they would pass clear and instructed the three Frenchmen to watch for other rocks. He walked aft to point it out to Swan, who seemed to have benefited from being left alone at the wheel. He had more life in him; he said, in the first time he had spoken except in answer to a question: 'I thought it'd be the batteries we'd be dodging, sir, not the rocks.'

Ramage then remembered that the Murex had been brought in while it was still daylight. 'You were able to watch the scenery as you came in?'

'No choice, sir: we - those who had not mutinied - were all penned up on the fo'c'sle.'

'What about the mutineers?'

Swan laughed at the memory. 'Well, the French who came on board drove them all below. You see, sir, I was the only person in the ship who spoke any French, so when the French boarded us and asked why we were flying a white flag, I said some of the men had "misbehaved".'

'So they thought we - the officers and the loyal ship's company - were bringing the ship in and handing her over, and the mutineers had been trying to stop us. So for a couple of hours or so the mutineers were knocked around - until we anchored off Brest and English-speaking Frenchmen came out!'

Ramage calculated that they would be clear of the Gullet on the next tack, and Sarah joined him as he walked forward to pick up the speaking trumpet. As he gave the first orders for the tack which would turn the Murex to the northwest, Auguste came up and pointed ahead.

'Sir, Les Fillettes are ahead. You will pass clear when you tack.'

'Thank you, Auguste. Ah yes, I see them.'

There was no reason to point them out to Swan, who was now giving the appearance of enjoying himself. The moonlight was strong enough to give a clear picture of the deck, and as they tacked the men were quicker at freeing a rope or making it fast on cleat, kevil or belaying pin.

Now Swan was steadying the ship on the new tack as sheets and braces were trimmed, and as Ramage put the speaking trumpet down beside one of the guns and gave a contented sigh, Sarah said: 'We're almost out of this beastly river. Is that -?'

'Pointe St Mathieu? Yes. It seems a long while ago...'

'In some ways. Certainly, as we sat up there in the sun and looked out across here and up towards Ushant, I never expected to be sailing out of the Iroise in the dead of night. Yet' - she paused, and he was not sure if she was choosing her words carefully or deciding whether or not to say it - 'yet the way you looked out at the Black Rocks, and Ushant, and across this estuary to the Camaret peninsula - you were recording it, not looking at it like a visitor. You were noting it down in the pilot book in your head, ready for use when the war started again. Our ride back to Jean-Jacques' - you were more interested in the forts and batteries than anything else!'

'No,' he protested mildly, 'I saw as much beauty as you did. I just made a note of the things that might be trying to kill me one day, like the guns in the batteries and forts.'