Jackson was first down the ladder, the wind catching his sandy hair, and before Rossi, who had followed him, had jumped into the boat, the American was shipping the rudder and the tiller. The rest of the men scrambled down, the last one followed by Orsini.
'Here!' Ramage shouted, throwing down to Jackson his rolled-up boat cloak, with the hat inside. The coxswain waited until Ramage was on board and sitting in the sternsheets and then pulled the boat cloak round him to hide his uniform. Ramage pushed his sword to one side to make the wooden grating a more comfortable seat, and then watched the enormous bulk of the Calypso seeming to move sideways as the men at the oars rowed the cutter clear.
Jackson eventually put the tiller over so that the cutter passed under the French frigate's stern to come along her lee side. 'La Robuste, sir,' he commented. The name meant nothing to Ramage. He counted up the gunports. Sixteen this side, so she was a 32-gun frigate. About the same size as the Calypso but not built from the same plans: her sheer was flatter, her fo'c'sle was longer, and he had the impression her transom raked more sharply.
Ramage saw several faces looking down at him over the taffrail and gave a cheery wave, which the men answered enthusiastically. He glanced at Paolo sitting opposite him. The lad had a wide grin on his face: no sign of any doubts or fears.
Suddenly every damned thing seemed to be happening at once, Ramage thought, and then realized it was his own fault because he would let his concentration wander. The cutter's bowman had hooked on with his boathook and while men pulled and hauled to secure painter and sternfast, Ramage stood up to find that the French had also unrolled a rope ladder, so he did not have the nail-breaking and finger-twisting climb up the battens. He pushed his sword round under his boat cloak and clutched his hat, guessing that no one on La Robuste's deck would recognize it for what it was.
He leapt for the ladder and immediately started climbing, glad that Paolo was only a couple of rungs below him because his weight stopped each wooden slat trying to swing inwards. More jerks followed as the rest of the men followed and this was the moment of danger: would any of the French officers look down past Ramage and Orsini and notice that the seamen were carrying cutlasses? Ramage let his boat cloak flow out.
Up, up, up - now his eyes at deck level; four more steps and he was on the deck itself with four men standing in a half circle to greet him - presumably the captain and three lieutenants.
Ramage paused, punched his cocked hat into shape, jammed it on his head and, undoing the buckle of his boat cloak, swirled it off and tossed it to Jackson, who was now standing beside Paolo at the entryport.
'Captain Ramage, of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Calypso at your service,' he said in French to the heavily-jowled and sallow-faced man with iron-grey hair who seemed to be the captain.
'Britannic?' the man muttered disbelievingly. He was a stocky man who had seemed taller than Ramage, but as he turned to look at the Calypso hove-to close by he protested: 'She is flying no -' he stopped and then, arms extended and palms uppermost, he said angrily: 'When she first hove-to she had no colours. She is French-built. Naturally, I think she is French.'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders and smiled. 'You are free to think whatever you like.'
The Frenchman's shrug made Ramage's look like a feeble twitch. 'Of course, of course.' He introduced himself. 'Citizen Robilliard, commanding the French national frigate La Robuste, at your service. May I -'
As he turned to introduce his officers, Ramage interrupted him calmly. 'Citizen Robilliard, a moment please. You are now the former captain of the former French frigate La Robuste, which is now a prize to His Britannic Majesty's frigate Calypso...'
'But... mon Dieu, citizen,' Robilliard protested, 'the war is over. It is all finished. We are friends. Where have you been that you do not know?' He slapped his thigh and started to roar with laughter. 'Ah, it is the English humour! You make a joke because -' he saw Ramage's face and his voice tailed off. He took a deep breath. 'No, you don't make a joke, Captain Ramage. You come from Europe. We have just come from the Batavian Republic. You have news...'
Suddenly Ramage felt sorry for this amiable man, whose accent showed he had grown up not far from Honfleur.
'Yes, hostilities have begun again. Brest is blockaded - my ship is part of that fleet.'
'And you are bound ...'
'... for the West Indies,' Ramage said. 'Now, m'sieu, you and your ship's company must consider yourselves my prisoners.'
'But this is absurd,' Robilliard protested, and then looked in the direction of Ramage's pointing finger. The Calypso's guns were run out while the French guns were still secured, well lashed down and ready for bad weather.
Ramage said to Paolo in Italian: 'Collect papers, charts and signal books from his cabin. Take a couple of men with you.'
Robilliard scratched his head, still unwilling to accept what he had heard. 'I can't believe this. You have documents? A newspaper - Le Moniteur, perhaps? There must be a written declaration - you just come on board and tell me that you have taken my ship prize! Why no!' he exclaimed, as though suddenly losing his temper. 'You are just pirates!'
'You are familiar with Brest?'
Robilliard nodded his head cautiously. 'I was blockaded in there for three years.'
'When did you sail?'
'As soon as the peace was signed. In fact we carried the dispatches informing the governor of the Batavian Republic'
Ramage beckoned to Auguste and Albert. 'These two men can tell you the names of all the important ships in Brest three weeks ago, as well as the names of the Navy and Army commandants, and answer any questions you care to ask. They are French. I was in Brest until after the war began; I can give you a certain amount of information.'
Auguste said: 'It's all true, citizen. The English ambassador left Paris, war began and Bonaparte arrested all the English in France, whether officers on leave or women. Bonaparte now makes war on women.'
Robilliard flushed and then said angrily to Ramage: 'This is ridiculous. Why, I could seize you, and then your ship would never dare open fire for fear of killing you!'
A series of metallic clicks made him look round and he was startled to find that three seamen, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, were standing close with broad grins on their faces and pistols aimed at Robilliard, and each man swung a cutlass as a parson might use his walking stick to knock the head off a dandelion.
'Captain,' Ramage said, 'we are wasting time, my ship would certainly open fire if necessary, my second-in-command has strict orders about that. But you would not be alive to hear the first broadside that might kill me. You have been tricked by the perfidious English, captain, just as I was tricked by the perfidious French less than a month ago. There is no dishonour: no need for you to fire a broadside "for the honour of the flag".'
Robilliard still shook his head disbelievingly. 'I have only seventy-six men because we were short when we left Brest and have had much sickness in Batavia and at sea, but how can you keep us all prisoner ... ?'
That is no problem,' Ramage said and signalled to Jackson. 'Give me your pistol,' he said in English, and then switched back to French to say to Robilliard: 'We are agreed, are we not, that you and your ship are my prize?'
Robilliard shrugged his shoulders and looked round at his three lieutenants. They were all young men, their faces frozen with the shock of finding an English frigate poised to rake their ship and her captain on board La Robuste.