'Qui va là?'
The challenge from the deck of L'Espoir was casuaclass="underline" there was no alarm in the sentry's voice. Nor, Ramage realized as his body unfroze from the first shock of the hail which had brought him back from Volterra, London, warm nights with Sarah at Jean-Jacques' château near Brest, anything but friendly expectancy.
And casually, a comforting and confident casualness, came Auguste's amiable reply, his Breton accent deliberately more pronounced than usual.
'Our captain is visiting your captain, citizen. Did you have a good voyage from Brest?'
Some night birds fussed in the distance and he recognized the squawk of a night heron. And another. They must be flying from Île Royale to the mangroves on the shore. And that squeakier note - and again. Oystercatchers? Perhaps. What about that damned sentry? Twenty yards to go. Would he be watching just this one boat he had first sighted? Or would he look beyond and see three more that, however stupid he was, would give the lie to Auguste's reply?
'One gale and five days of calm. What ship?'
'We are L'Intrépide, and that's La Robuste over there.'
'Your captain's name, citizen?'
Ramage hissed: 'Keep rowing: lay us alongside, whatever happens.'
'Citizen Camus, and who is he visiting?'
'Who is he visiting?' asked the puzzled sentry. 'Why our captain you said, citizen.'
'And what's your captain's name, you mule?' Auguste asked crossly.
'Magon,' said a deeper voice. 'I am the captain of L'Espoir. But rest on your oars ...' the voice sounded harsh yet uncertain. 'L'Intrépide, you say? That wasn't L'Intrépide that I saw. And Camus - I don't know that name.'
Would Auguste pull it off, delay for a couple of minutes? 'Pretend you're the captain!' he hissed at Gilbert. 'Interrupt in a moment!'
'I don't expect you do; we're bound for Brest from Batavia,' Auguste said, repeating the story Ramage had given him earlier.
'But even so,' the doubting voice said from L'Espoir's deck, 'I don't even remember "Camus" as a lieutenant.'
'Merdel' exclaimed Gilbert angrily, as though he was the Camus in question and whose patience was now exhausted. 'I haven't heard of "Magon" either, and L'Espoir hasn't exactly distinguished herself, has she; you probably spent all the last war safely blockaded in Brest. Took a peace treaty to get you out again, eh? Now you're at sea' - Gilbert paused a moment and Ramage thought he too had heard a shout from the other side of the ship - 'you've forgotten your manners. Good night, citizen. I'm not sitting here in my boat listening to that sort of welcome when I come to pay a visit!'
'No, no, you misunderstand me, citizen,' Magon said hastily, 'it's -'
He broke off as two pistol shots snapped across the frigate's deck and in the distance Ramage heard the night herons squawk in alarm. 'Alongside!' he shouted. 'Stand by to board, men!'
It seemed only a moment later that men were tossing oars and the cutter slammed against the frigate's hull and suddenly he could smell the humid, almost sickly smell of the weed that had grown along her waterline, and there was the reek of garlic, even down here.
Ramage leapt for the battens and both ahead and astern heard shouting in English and the thud, thud, thud of the spiked heads of tomahawks being driven into the hull planking to make steps for the men to board.
Bellowing and shouting he climbed, fingers gripping the edges of the battens, feet pressing sideways for footholds and his legs heaving and thrusting him up. Suddenly he was standing on L'Espoir's deck and a man he guessed to be Captain Magon was wresting a musket from the sentry, who was clearly paralysed by the shouts and shots suddenly disturbing the tropical night.
Ramage dragged a pistol from his waistband and cocked it as he aimed at Magon, but the man pitched forward as another pistol firing beside him left Ramage's ears ringing. Ramage just had time to see in the light of the lantern hanging in the shrouds that Magon was bearded, then he turned towards the quarterdeck, shouting to his men.
There was a lantern on the binnacle: as he ran up the steps towards it, cutlass in his right hand, pistol in his left, he saw the one man on the quarterdeck, probably the officer keeping an anchor watch, running towards him, the blade of a cutlass he held over his head glinting in the dim light. The man was shouting almost hysterically and from three feet away he slashed downwards.
Ramage held up his own cutlass horizontally, the parry of quinte, and the man screamed and stepped back to slash again. He must have been a butcher before going to sea, Ramage thought, noting that the man had bared his right side. A quick lunge, a gurgle, and he was leaning over the collapsed man desperately tugging his cutlass free. How many times had he shouted at men under instruction that a cutlass was a slashing weapon: using the point was a quick way of getting cut down as you tried to withdraw from a body which invariably wrapped itself round your blade.
Jackson, Rossi, Stafford and more than a dozen other men now stood round him but, except for the body at Ramage's feet, the quarterdeck was now empty. 'The gunroom!' Ramage shouted and led the way down the companion way, which would bring them out first by the door to the captain's cabin and beside the second companion way to the gunroom.
Aitken and Renwick's boats had come alongside just ahead of Ramage's cutter, and the first lieutenant, uttering wild Scottish battle cries, scrambled down from the gangway on to the maindeck where French seamen, hurrying up from the lowerdeck where they had been having supper, found themselves running straight into bitter fighting.
Renwick's men were dropping down on to the maindeck from further forward just as Aitken, realizing the value of lanterns, seized one and held it aloft and began the desperate game of hide-and-seek among the guns.
Paolo and his four Frenchmen, who had run along the larboard gangway to the forward end, dropped down and hid behind a couple of guns as dozens of yelling Frenchmen came rushing up the forehatch ladder, some of them - Paolo guessed them to be petty officers - pausing to open up arms chests and throw cutlasses on the deck for the men to grab.
The captain had been most emphatic, so Paolo did not mind hiding behind the gun with Auguste, while Gilbert, Albert and Louis crouched under the barrel of the next one forward. 'Orsini,' the captain had said, and Paolo could hear the words even now, 'you are not to get involved in the fighting: I have enough fighters; I want talkers!' But it was hard just crouching here and watching those men giving out cutlasses. The five of them could - but no, the captain had been emphatic.
He heard a dreadful screaming from right aft amid the shouting and cursing of a dozen men yelling in both French and English. Pistol shots, the clang of cutlass blades - accidente, the worst noise was coming from the gunroom: all the ship's officers and warrant officers must have been trapped there - and, Paolo knew only too well, they would have swords and pistols in racks outside their cabin doors. But with all these wretches rushing up from below and snatching up cutlasses it was not a question of cutting off the snake's head ...