By now Ramage was running towards the bucket, a hand groping for a pistol and cocking it as he kept an eye on the four matelots. In one almost continuous movement he was moving towards them with the pistol aimed. Behind him he could hear the thudding feet and then the clicking of locks as the pistols were cocked.
'My wife has dealt with the bosun. Unless you all put your muskets down I shall shoot you - the man nearest the mainmast. My friends - ah, here they are - will shoot the rest of you.'
He said to Auguste conversationally: 'I have the man on the right in my sights. The next is for you. Then Gilbert and then Louis.'
The four matelots seemed frozen by the speed of events. 'Muskets down on the deck,' Ramage reminded them.
Sarah said with the same calm: 'Shoot one of them, to encourage the others!'
The matelots heard her and hastily put the guns down on the deck. 'Collect them up, Gilbert and Albert. Now you,' he gestured to the nearest man, 'come here.'
As the matelot reluctantly walked the few feet, outlined against the brighter light thrown by the lantern and clearly expecting to be shot, Ramage wrenched his knife from its sheath and held it in his left hand.
'Closer,' he ordered. 'Come on, stand close to me, my friend!'
The matelot was a plump, pleasant-looking man with a chubby face, but now his brow was soaked in perspiration as though water was dribbling from his hair; his eyes jerked from pistol to knife and his tongue ran round his lips as though chasing an elusive word.
'Closer,' Ramage said as the man stopped a couple of paces away. Then, as he shuffled forward a step, Ramage's knife curving towards him flashed briefly in the lantern light and several people gasped and Sarah dropped the now empty bucket with a crash and tried to muffle a scream.
The matelot swayed, a puzzled vacant expression on his face, waiting for the pain to start, and everyone expected blood to spurt because clearly Ramage's knife had just eviscerated the man.
Instead his trousers fell down in a heap round his ankles.
'Next time it won't be your trousers,' Ramage said. 'Now, where are the keys to free the prisoners?'
The sailor stood, speechless and paralysed by fear.
Ramage prodded him with the pistol, forcing him to take a step back. The man had enough presence of mind to step out of his trousers and Sarah picked them up, checked if they had a pocket, and finding they had not, walked to the ship's side and threw them into the sea.
'It doesn't make up for my torn dress,' she said to no one in particular, 'but it is very satisfying!'
Auguste had taken command of his brother, Louis and Gilbert, and had them lined up with the muskets covering the other matelots. Auguste picked up the lantern and then, as an afterthought, put it down again, took the big bottle of rum and tossed it over the bulwark. 'Madame has the right idea,' he said, 'no one gets fighting drunk without spirits to drink and,' he added slyly, 'no man is a hero without his trousers.'
With that he took out his knife and cut the belts of the other three matelots, leaving them standing with their trousers round their ankles. 'Forgive me, madame,' he said to Sarah, 'but I am following your husband's example.'
'I am a married woman,' she said demurely.
'What a wife,' one of the matelots muttered. 'She uses a pistol like a filleting knife. '
'I need another lantern,' Ramage said to Gilbert. 'Will you get ours up from the boat? Take Louis with you and bring the cutlasses too. This fellow,' he tapped the sailor on the head with the flat of the knife, 'will suffer if his friends misbehave while you are gone.'
As soon as Gilbert and Louis returned with the lantern and cutlasses, Ramage commented: 'Time is short: that shot may bring over inquisitive people.' To the trouserless seaman, who seemed to be the senior of the survivors, he said: 'Now we free the British prisoners. If you want to live to an old age, you will help.'
The matelot haltingly explained that the irons had only four bars running through them, secured by four padlocks, and the four keys were on a hook in the cabin the bosun had been using. Suddenly Ramage remembered the other two guards. Where were they?
Ramage sent Gilbert with his lantern down the companionway into the gunroom ahead of the matelot and himself. The lantern lit the steps and showed the matelot's movements clearly. Since the stroke that had cut his belt and lost him his trousers, it was clear that the man feared the blade more than the pistol, which surprised Ramage. Perhaps the wretched matelot's imagination conjured up a more horrifying picture of what a knife could do to a man walking about clad only in a thick woollen jersey and a pair of felt shoes obviously cobbled up by a clumsy sailmaker.
The sailor pointed to the second lieutenant's cabin and followed Gilbert into it. The two men took up all the space and Ramage stood at the doorway, with the point of the knife just resting on the base of the matelot's spine, so that he moved slowly and very obviously kept clear of Gilbert and the lantern.
Finally he reached round very slowly, offering four large keys to Ramage, like an acolyte at communion. 'These are the ones, sir.'
'You carry them. Call to the other two guards and warn them to put their weapons down, or you'll die. Now we go and undo those padlocks.'
The next cabin was empty. 'The captain was here,' the matelot said hastily, 'but he was so ill they took him to the hospital yesterday.'
Ramage felt a surge of relief. He had not looked forward to interviewing a captain who drove his crew to mutiny, whatever his state of health.
The two guards were collapsed in a drunken stupor and the prisoners were lying at the fore end of the lowerdeck. Iron rings protruded from the deck so that metal rods through leg irons needed only a padlock at one end - the other was too bulbous to pass through the eye - to secure each of the four rows of men. They all looked up, and although blinking and squinting in the lantern light, all were wide awake, obviously roused by the pistol shot.
Ramage decided it would be easier to ensure their attention if he left them prone on the deck for a few more minutes so he waved the matelot to one side, telling him to be ready.
'Gentlemen,' Ramage said loudly. 'I am Captain Ramage, of the King's Service. I spoke to one of your lieutenants while delivering potatoes - ah,' he pointed, 'it was you. Very well, in a few minutes you will all be free. I have this fellow here and three other French seamen on deck as prisoners and the bosun is dead - you heard the shot. But listen carefully: in addition to this man' - he gestured towards Gilbert - 'there are three other Frenchmen up there, dressed in fishermen's clothes. Two of them do not speak English but all three are responsible for your rescue. So be very careful.
'I shall put the six French guards in the open boat we came out in, and cast them adrift so that they can row into Brest Harbour with one oar and report what's happened. That will save us guarding prisoners, and there's been enough killing for tonight.'
There was some murmuring from three men who Ramage guessed were the lieutenants and the master. Very well, he would deal with them in a moment.
'The guards will report that the Murex has been recaptured by the English and sailed. Anyway that will be obvious to anyone standing on the beach. So, within ten minutes at the most of those irons being unlocked, I want this ship tacking down the Gullet under topsails. We'll let the anchor cable run to save time.
'Two more things. My wife is on deck. ' He then let a hard note come into his voice. 'Any orders I give will not be questioned. I have taken command of this ship. I do not have my commission but it is dated September 1797. Nor do I have orders from the Admiralty, but anyone doubting my authority can go off in the boat with the French guards and become a prisoner of war. '