Ramage's Devil

'But we'll be back in London before then, won't we?'

He was sure she suspected the idea that was popping in and out of his mind like an importunate beggar.

She said, in a flat voice: 'It would be madness to go after L'Espoir. You'll lose the Murex and everyone on board. A scout's job is to raise the alarm, dearest. Losing everything won't help Jean-Jacques, but getting help will...'

He nodded and was startled when she said: 'You took so long to make up your mind.'

She was making it easier for him, and he took the opportunity as gracefully as possible. 'I needed to give it a lot of thought.'

She sat up in the cot, swung her legs out on to the deck and holding one end firmly stood up. She walked over to him and, standing to one side, gently held his head against her naked body. 'You had two choices, dearest, Cayenne or Plymouth. Two choices. But you know as well as I do there was really only one that you could take.'

'Yes, but...'

'But in the same circumstances another captain would have had only one choice: he would have gone to Plymouth!'

He nuzzled against her, his unshaven face rasping slightly on her warm skin, his chin pressing gently against her breasts. 'I suppose most other captains wouldn't have to choose because they do not usually meet people like Jean-Jacques.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ramage had just gone on deck after Swan called that they could now sight Ushant, and the deck lookouts had been sent aloft when both men heard the hail.

'Deck here!'

'Foremost lookout, sir: sail ho! Two sail!'

'Where away?'

'Two points on the starboard bow, sir, frigates I reckon.'

'Very well, keep a sharp lookout.'

Swan turned to Ramage, saw that he was already looking over the bow, and heard him cursing. 'Those blasted mutineers - I wish they'd left us the bring-'em-near. Even a nightglass!'

'They must have spotted us ten minutes ago, probably more. They'll recognize the rig...'

'And guess we're the Murex - perhaps sailing under the French flag?'

Ramage shook his head. News did not travel that fast. 'I doubt if the Admiralty yet know anything about the mutiny. In a day or two they'll read about it in the Moniteur, half a page of French bombast about oppressed English seamen fighting for their liberté, fraternité and égalité. '

'Yes,' Swan said bitterly, 'at the price of treason and making sure that fifteen of their shipmates go into a French prison.'

'That's what is meant by fraternité,' Ramage said laconically.

'That westernmost frigate has tacked,' commented Phillips, who had come on deck when he heard the hail.

'And the other one is bearing away a point or so,' Ramage noted. 'They're taking no chances. If we try to make a bolt for it, one can catch us to windward and the other to leeward.'

'But they recognize our rig,' Swan protested. 'The French don't have any brigs like this one!'

'They had one briefly, until last night,' Ramage said. 'Remember, in wartime all sails are hostile until they prove themselves otherwise. I presume we still have a set of signal flags.'

'Yes, sir,' Swan said and took the hint. 'I'll have our pendant numbers bent on ready.'

'Deck there!' Once again the lookout was shouting from the masthead, the pitch of his voice rising with excitement.

'Deck here,' Swan called back.

'More sail, sir, just beyond those frigates. Must be a couple of dozen, I reckon, and some of them seventy-fours and bigger.'

'Count 'em, blast it!' Swan shouted. 'Divide 'em up and count 'em.'

Ramage counted the days since the declaration of war. Yes, it might be. Indeed, if there were ships of the line it had to be, so there would be an admiral. Which meant so much explaining to be done; so much persuading to be done.

'Deck there, foremasthead here ... I'm counting as we lift up on the swell waves, sir ... Looks like at least six o' the line - one of 'em bigger'n a seventy-four - and seven frigates, including the first two.'

'Very well,' Swan said. 'Report if you sight more.' He turned to Ramage. 'Well, sir, can't be French and I don't think they're Spanish.'

'No, it'll be the Channel Fleet coming out to blockade Brest again ... Well, they've had eighteen months' rest, but winter will soon be here.'

Phillips gave a dry laugh. 'The equinoctial gales will be along ... then they'll dream of being "Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind"!'

Both Ramage and Swan laughed, but both were thankful they were not serving in the blockading fleet. The Black Rocks ... The description really stood for the twenty-five or thirty miles from the island of Ushant in the north to the Île de Sein in the south and, covering the entrance to Brest rather than the Rocks themselves, must make up the most iron-bound coast in the world: for almost every day of the year it was a lee shore wide open to the full fury of the Atlantic.

Yet by a quirk of nature the ships of the Royal Navy, forced to blockade Brest, were fortunate. The French fleet could leave Brest only with an easterly wind. A strong wind with much west in it left them unable to beat out of the Gullet and meant that they were also blockaded by nature.

The blockading British fleet's line-of-battle ships could stay twenty, thirty or even forty miles out to sea, so that they had plenty of room when the westerly Atlantic gales turned into storms lasting a week ... A captain with his ship under storm canvas could pull down his newly-tarred sou'wester and curse that he had ever chosen the Navy, but apart from keeping station on the admiral if possible (it never was in a full storm) it was more miserable than dangerous.

As a precaution a line of frigates, each within sight of the other, linked the fleet with the French coast. But with west in the wind the admiral could be sure that nature was his ally, keeping the French penned in. France was in fact unlucky because the perfidious English had along their Channel coast large and sheltered harbours which they could enter whatever the weather - Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, Portsmouth and the area inside the Isle of Wight, Dover and the Thames estuary.

The French were plagued with much higher tides and all their main Channel harbours - Calais, Havre de Grâce, Cherbourg and Boulogne - were artificial. The first of any size which was natural was Brest - which, as the Admiralty stated it - was 'outside Channel limits'.

So a west wind kept the French penned in; but the situation changed immediately the windvane on the church of St Louis de Brest swung round: an east wind tried to blow the blockading Royal Navy out to sea and gave the French a fair wind for slipping out of the Gullet while the blockaders beat back again to close the door.

Indeed, as Ramage knew from experience, that is why the blockading fleet had the frigates - as soon as the wind turned east the British frigates moved close up to the Black Rocks: close in with the Black Rocks, a couple of miles seaward of Pointe St Mathieu. They were, he reflected, a suitable name for rocks when you were commanding a frigate on a dark night in an easterly gale and peering with salt-sore and weary eyes for a sight of the white collars of breaking seas that would enable you to give hasty helm and sail orders to save the ship.

'Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind' - words written on most midshipmen's hearts, and worthy of being carved on many a captain's tombstone, Ramage thought wryly. Still, it was worse for the admirals - they might have to spend a couple of years out here, shifting their flag from ship to ship while captains and seamen had a brief rest when they returned to Plymouth for water, provisions or repairs. The wear and tear on masts, spars and cordage keeping a close blockade off somewhere like Brest was beyond belief.

With her courses furled, the Murex was lying hove-to, her backed foretopsail trying to push her bow one way and maintopsail to turn it the other and the pair of them leaving the brig in a state of equilibrium, rising and falling on the swell waves like a resting seagull.