'But has all that really helped you now - as we sail out?'
'Oh yes, although I was gambling that the commandant of the port, or the commander of the artillery, or the commander of the garrisons, would all disagree about whose responsibility it was to warn the forts.'
'Do you have to gamble when you're on your honeymoon?'
He squeezed her arm. 'It's better for the family fortunes to gamble with roundshot rather than dice!'
Sarah laughed and nodded. 'Yes, I suppose so: if a roundshot knocks her husband's head off, at least his widow has the estate. But if he gambles at backgammon tables she has a husband with a head, but no bed to sleep in!'
Ramage stood at the taffrail of the Murex in the darkness and mentally drew a cross on an imaginary chart to represent the brig's position. She was now clearing the gulf of the Iroise, which stretched from the high cliffs and ruined abbey of Pointe St Mathieu over there to starboard across to the Camaret peninsula to larboard.
Ahead was the Atlantic, and the English Channel was to the north, round Ushant, which stood like a sentry off the northwestern tip of France. The Bay of Biscay, with Spain and Portugal beyond, was to the south. Astern, to everyone's relief, was Brest, and about 300 miles due east of it was Paris.
So that was it: from here, a tack out to the northwestward for the rest of the night and then dawn would reveal Ushant to the northeast, so that he could then bear away. He then had a choice: either he could run with a soldier's wind to the Channel Islands to get more men (having the advantage of a short voyage with such a small ship's company), or he could stretch north (perhaps nor'nor'east, he had not looked at the chart yet) for Falmouth or Plymouth.
The advantage of either port was that once he reported and handed over the Murex, he and Sarah could post to London or go over to the family home at St Kew, not far from either port. On second thoughts London would be better: their Lordships would certainly need written reports, and it would do no harm to be available when Lord St Vincent read them, concerning both his escape and the size and readiness of the French fleet in Brest, and the Murex episode.
Anyway, the Murex was now making a good six or seven knots; the courses had been set once they were safely out in the estuary and drawing well. A couple of seamen at the wheel were keeping the ship sailing fast, with Swan occasionally peering down at one or the other of the dimly lit compasses in the binnacle, his confidence restored.
Sarah was asleep down in the captain's cabin; Ramage himself was weary but warm at last, thanks to Sarah finding a heavy cloak in the captain's cabin and bringing it up to him. Dawn was not far off and the sky was clear with the moon still bright, although there was now a chill greyness that seemed to be trying to edge aside the black of night. The Murex was not just butting wind waves with her weather bow and scattering them in spray that drifted across like a scotch mist, salting the lips and making the eyes sore: now she was lifting over Atlantic swells that were born somewhere out in the deep ocean.
Very well, he told himself, the time had come to make the decision so that the moment daylight revealed Ushant on the horizon, he could give Swan the new course, for Falmouth, Plymouth or the Channel Islands.
Or southwestward, to start a 4,000-mile voyage to Cayenne, without orders, without much chance of success, to try to rescue Jean-Jacques and the other fifty or so people declared enemies of the French Republic?
He walked back and forth beside the taffrail and then stood looking astern at the Murex's curling wake. There was one thing in the brig's favour. One thing in his favour, he corrected himself (there was no point in trying to shift the responsibility on to the poor Murex). Yes, the one thing in his favour was that he knew he was only a few hours behind L'Espoir. As a frigate she was much bigger, but more important she had fifty extra people on board, all of whom had to be kept under guard. So the frigate would be carrying extra men, seamen or soldiers, to make up the guard. Twenty-five? Extra in the sense that they were in addition to the normal ship's company. Whoa, not so fast; she was armed enflûte, so she would have only the guns on the upperdeck, say half a dozen 12-pounders. And that - being armed en flûte - meant she needed only sufficient men to fight six or eight guns, not the thirty or so which had been removed to make room for the prisoners. Against that, the French in Brest were very short of seamen: that had been the last piece of information given out by that wretched bosun before Sarah shot him. The Commandant de l'Armée navale de Brest would certainly favour fighting ships at the expense of transports like L'Espoir.
Yet the French were in a hurry to get these prisoners on their way to Cayenne before the British re-established their standing blockade of Brest, which would otherwise have made the capture of L'Espoir a distinct possibility. In turn that could also mean that these fifty prisoners were of considerable importance: people that Bonaparte wanted out of France at any cost and incarcerated in Devil's Island.
So apart from the importance of Jean-Jacques - which from the Royalist point of view was considerable - what about the others? What value would the British government put on them? In other words, if Captain Ramage acting without orders attempted with a brig and a dozen or so men a task for which a fully-manned frigate would not be too much, and succeeded, what then? Pats on the head, a page in the London Gazette, a column or so in the next issue of the Naval Chronicle, the grudging but heavily-qualified approval of the First Lord.
But if Captain Ramage failed in this self-appointed role of rescuer riding a (borrowed) white horse, what then? Well, the resulting court-martial would make the trial establishing his father as a scapegoat for the government look like a hunt cancelled because of heavily frozen ground. At best, Captain Ramage would spend the rest of his life on half-pay. At worst? Well, at least being cashiered with the disgrace of being 'rendered incapable of further service in his Majesty's Naval Service'.
Yet it really boiled down to ignoring the Admiralty. By chance he had been able to recapture a British brig from the enemy, and without his activity the Murex would have been added to the French Navy. That was where the chance ended. Did he owe it to Jean-Jacques to try to rescue him? A debt of honour? That was using a rather high-flown phrase, but supposing Ramage had been seized and taken off to some improbable prison, and Jean-Jacques had escaped and knew where he was? Jean-Jacques would attempt a rescue. That was all there was to it, really, although the Admiralty would certainly not agree.
To make an enormous dog-leg course to call at Plymouth to get provisions, men and water would wreck everything because it would probably mean that a couple of frigates would be sent in his place, and a vital week lost - at least a week; more if there was bad weather. It would take a couple of days to convince the port admiral at Plymouth of the importance of such a rescue and pass a message to the Admiralty (though with the new telegraph, Plymouth could send a signal to London and get a reply in a few hours), then watering and provisioning the frigates would take another day or so ... By the time they were clear of the Chops of the Channel (and perhaps driven back by a westerly storm or gale) L'Espoir would be a third of the way to Cayenne; a third of the way to the Île du Diable. At this moment, though, the Murex brig was only a matter of hours behind her. Yet without enough men to do any good and perhaps short of provisions and water. But no more than fifty miles ... If L'Espoir had careless or apathetic officers of the deck, poorly set sails and inattentive men at the wheel, plus the feeling that once clear of Brest they were safe from the Royal Navy, the smaller Murex, sailed hard, would be able to make up the gap.
'I'm going below for half an hour,' he told Swan. 'Report when you can see Ushant.'