One of the officers stepped forward, proffering his sword, which he was holding horizontally in both hands. Ramage noticed that his uniform was identical with the other officers, but covered in fine dust. The man's face was white and he was gripping the sword like an alcoholic clutching a glass.
‘Iam Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Thurot, sir, and to you I surrender the French national frigate La Comète.'
Ramage took the sword and then saw that the man's hands were trembling violently. He answered in French: 'I accept the surrender, but your Captain ...?'
Thurot swallowed and, turning slightly, gestured towards the hole in the quarterdeck. 'He was standing there talking to me . . . There was a terrible crash ... I was hurled three metres against the taffrail . . . All we found of him was . . .' He pointed at one of the officers, who held out a bent sword and a torn tricorne.
‘My sympathies,' Ramage said formally. ‘You were the First Lieutenant?'
'Yes, so I succeeded to the command. But before I could warn La Prudente, she blew up. Those guns on le Diamant - mon Dieu!’
Ramage passed the surrendered sword to Jackson and immediately another French lieutenant stepped forward to proffer his. Ramage took them one after another until Jackson had four tucked under his arm.
Ramage told Thurot to take him on an inspection of the damage. It took ten minutes, and at the end of it Ramage felt more hopeful, La Comète had two holes in her. The shot which had killed the Captain and smashed the wheel had come in at a steep angle over the starboard quarter as she tacked back to the convoy. After ploughing through the wheel and deck it had gone on through the half deck and buried itself in the ship's side in the Second Lieutenant's cabin, springing two planks and forcing them outwards but not actually making a hole. A second shot had gone down the main hatch and smashed through the hull planking well below the waterline.
The French carpenter's mates had managed to nail canvas and tallow-smeared boards over the first leak, but little had been done about the second because the carpenter had by then lost both his nerve and his head. Now he was running around in a panic, screaming at his mates, picking up a maul one moment and tossing it down the next. The officers could do nothing with him, nor would he let them set seamen to work. When Ramage approached with Thurot the carpenter caught sight of the British uniform, uttered an enraged bellow and rushed at Ramage, to find himself staring at a hard-eyed Jackson who had dropped the surrendered swords with a clatter and had the point of his cutlass an inch from the man's corpulent stomach.
Ramage wasted no time: he ordered Jackson and Rossi to secure the man while Thurot was sent to get irons and Stafford told to fetch the Juno's carpenter and his mates, who were still waiting in the cutter.
The carpenter took one look and told Ramage what wood he needed and that he and his mates had their tools with them. He would have the leak under control in two hours. Ramage found that one of the French lieutenants spoke English and ordered him to stay with the carpenter to act as translator and make sure he received whatever he needed.
Then he took Thurot to the dead Captain's cabin, intending to give him instructions. As they walked into the cabin Ramage saw that, apart from the battle damage, nothing had been touched. The desk drawers were still closed and presumably locked, and beside the desk was a small wooden box with a roped lid and holes drilled into the sides.
As Ramage stopped and stared, Thurot noticed the box and gasped. He moved towards it but Ramage waved him away and made him sit down. Pulling the lid back, Ramage took out the handful of papers and glanced through them. The French challenges and replies for several more months, a copy of the signal book (there must have been two on board, because presumably one had been on deck) as well as the Captain's orders and letter book.
Ramage sat at the desk with the box between his feet. Thurot was now verging on collapse. Obviously badly shaken when the shot blasted a hole in the deck, he now realized that he had failed to throw the weighted box containing the ship's secret papers over the side. In the Royal Navy that was, next to cowardice, one of the most serious offences a commanding officer could commit. In the France of Bonaparte Ramage guessed that it might well lead to Thurot's execution if it was ever discovered. He looked at the box and then at Thurot. The man's eyes dropped, his skin seemed to turn green and perspiration beaded his face.
'The Widow?' Ramage asked in a conversational tone.
Thurot nodded. The guillotine, nicknamed The Widow, did indeed await an officer who allowed the enemy to capture such papers. Being 'married to the widow' was the slang expression for an execution.
'My Captain,' Ramage began, as though the affair of the secret papers was of no further consequence to him, 'could send you all to England as prisoners. There you'd rot in the hulks, as well you know.'
Again Thurot nodded, as though fear and misery had made him speechless.
'How many in your ship's company?'
'Two hundred and seventy-three petty officers and men, five warrant officers and four officers, and the Captain.'
'You suffered no casualties?'
'Casualties? Oh yes, I forgot. Eleven dead and seventeen wounded, but only four of them seriously.'
Ramage breathed deeply and noisily, as though considering something. 'My Captain is a stern man. He could send you all to England, even though there is a more - how shall we say it, a more civilized way...'
Thurot was obviously trying to pull himself together, and he wiped his face with the back of his hand. 'What way, m'sieur?’
Ramage gestured towards Martinique. 'It would be more civilized to let your men row ashore. A long row, admittedly, but then it is a long voyage to England. The officers would give me their parole, and you would agree that the men do not serve again until formally exchanged ...'
Thurot glanced down at the box. Ramage kicked it back with his heal, so that it slid under his chair. 'If you agree to those terms, I will take the box away in a kitbag, padded with old clothes, so no one will know ...'
Thurot gulped, as though his Adam's apple was trying to leap out of his mouth, nodded his head vigorously and then, to Ramage's horror, burst into tears.
An hour later Ramage stood with Southwick on the Juno's quarterdeck watching as the Surcouf tacked up towards the Grande Anse du Diamant beach, towing ten boats astern of her. Southwick commented that she looked like a dog running out of a butcher's shop with a string of sausages.
The boats were packed with men. The first four were the Surcouf’sown boats, then came the Juno's launch and jolly boat, and finally La Comète's boats. Only twenty Frenchmen remained on board La Comète to handle the chain pump, and by the time the Surcouf had cast off the boats as near to the beach as possible and waited for the French to scramble up the beach and the boats to return, the Juno's carpenter would have stopped La Comète's leak, ready for the Surcouf to take her in tow.
The heavily-laden merchant ships were the next problem. He had tossed up between them and the two frigates, which were now drifting past the southern end of the Diamond still firmly locked together. Finally he decided that an enterprising French officer, as soon as he landed on the beach, would try to find some native boats (if the merchantmen's own boats had been smashed up by La Créole) and, in breach of paroles and exchange agreements, set about getting aboard the merchantmen as soon as night fell.
Fifteen heavily armed Junos led by Rossi were now guarding the twenty Frenchmen working La Comète's pumps. The moment the Surcouf returned with the boats, those twenty Frenchmen would be allowed to row to the shore, providing the carpenter and his mates had stopped the leak satisfactorily.
Now, as the Juno beat up towards the cluster of drifting merchantmen, La Créole finished a sweep close to the shore and bore away towards her.