Ramage & the Guillotine (39 page)

“We'll start here,” he said, hauling in the leadline. “Louis, begin baiting the hooks.”

Three hours later there was still no sign of the
Marie
although, the fisherman commented enthusiastically, the fishing was very good despite the moon. Ramage fervently wished the fish would stop biting but, knowing how the families at Mers depended on fish for their food, he thought it would be churlish to suggest they just sat there quietly without the lines over the side, either lying to the grapnel or rowing up to the west for half an hour and letting the wind and current carry them back parallel with the coast.

As more fish were hauled into the boat, twisting and thumping, covering everything with scales and slime, Ramage looked wistfully at the grapnel and line. He remembered all the boats he had seen in various parts of the world, comfortably anchored, with the men in them fishing by dangling lines over bow and stern, occasionally hauling in a line to find the bait had been taken. Three hours of rowing and drifting seemed to have knotted most of his muscles. It was unlikely—though pride prevented him from inspecting them in the light of the lantern—that his palms had any skin left on them; the sharpness of the pain when a dollop of spray soaked them again indicated that blisters had burst.

They were just rowing the boat round to get back to the westward again when Stafford said, almost as though it was of no consequence, “There she is.”

Ramage glanced round and saw a darker shape: the
Marie
reaching down towards them, perhaps five hundred yards away and down moon. The fisherman hurriedly shipped his oar, tipped the bait out of the bucket and shook it to make sure no water was left inside, and put it over the lantern. The light had not been bright, but suddenly dousing it made Ramage realize just how much it had affected their night vision and allowed the
Marie
to get so close.

“We hide the light now in case someone watches from the shore with night-glasses,” he explained to Ramage. “It is best, eh?” he asked, and Ramage suddenly realized how determined the man was to make a good impression on the two Britons.

Ramage rested on his oar and leaned over to the fisherman. “While there is time—” he held out his hand, and winced as the fisherman shook it enthusiastically, “thank you.” There was nothing more that could be put into words and the fisherman seemed to understand.

“You will be all right with Dyson,” the fisherman said reassuringly, “he is a good man.”

Ramage sat and watched the approaching fishing-boat. Dyson was bringing her along thirty yards or so to leeward of the rowing-boat, obviously intending to luff up and then heave-to, leaving them a few yards to row to get alongside.

Ramage glanced towards the beach: the odd patches of cloud crossing the moon, combined with the fact the moon was now low in the sky, made it impossible to distinguish the cluster of houses at Mers, nor could he see the large tower of the church in Le Tréport, St Jacques tower, according to Louis. Even using a good night-glass it would be impossible to spot the rendezvous between the rowing-boat and the
Marie.

There was a sudden hiss of water and flapping of canvas and Ramage turned to see the
Marie
coming up into the wind, her jib flapping and the blocks squeaking as the mainsheet was hurriedly hauled in. The fishing-boat lost way as she turned north-west, the jib stopped flapping as the wind caught it aback, and a man was leaning on the tiller, keeping the helm over, so the rudder tried to push the bow round to larboard against the thrust of the backed jib trying to force it over to starboard.

The fisherman snapped an order, they bent to the oars, and a couple of minutes later Louis was standing in the bow throwing a line to a man on the stern of the
Marie.
The nearness of the two boats emphasized the height of the waves: it was far safer to board the
Marie
over her stern rather than risk the two vessels crashing together if the rowing-boat went alongside.

With the line secured, Ramage and Stafford stowed the oars neatly, despite the protests of the fisherman that he would do that later. Ramage told the Cockney to board first and Louis waited for a smooth patch, then hauled on the line to bring the bow close. Stafford leapt up, and a moment later Ramage followed him. The
Marie
's stern began to lift as she seesawed over a crest and Louis waited a minute or two. By the time he had jumped on board, Ramage had recognized the dark figures on the
Marie's
deck as Jackson and Rossi. A hurried question thrown at Jackson as they shouted goodbye to the fisherman and began to sheet in the backed jib brought the reply that all the despatches had been delivered to Lord Nelson, who was on board a frigate at anchor in the Downs.

Five minutes later the
Marie
was reaching up to the nor'-nor'-west on the larboard tack with Dyson explaining that he wanted to get into the deep bay between Dungeness and Hythe and then bear away for the Downs, so that as far as any nosey Revenue cutter was concerned they had been fishing off the ‘Ness.

Then, sitting in the little cockpit with Dyson crouched over the compass and Louis, Stafford and Rossi down in the cuddy, Ramage was able to extract from a Jackson obviously impatient to hear of his Captain's adventures a full report on the delivery of the despatches to Lord Nelson. The last courier had arrived in Boulogne on Sunday evening, Jackson said, with the news that “the Italian gentleman” had been arrested by the gendarmes, although at the time he left Amiens both Louis and Stafford were still free. He had emphasized to Jackson that the despatch he was delivering was of enormous importance.

Jackson said that as soon as he told Dyson they prepared to sail. By nightfall they were a mile off Boulogne and heading for the rendezvous. Fortunately the other
Marie
was fishing near the rendezvous, and leaving Dyson and Rossi to return to Boulogne, he went direct to Lord Nelson's frigate in the Downs. Fifteen minutes after handing over the despatch he had been hurried below to the Admiral's cabin and ordered to tell him everything he knew.

“I tried to avoid saying
anything
about the smugglers, sir, apart from the name of the smack,” Jackson said defensively, as if anticipating Ramage's wrath, “but his Lordship said he wasn't interested in people breaking a few laws, he was concerned about what had happened to you.

“So I just told him the bare bones of it, about how you'd been arrested in Amiens, but he saw through me: he might only have one eye, sir, but he can see through a six-inch plank. He got angry and told me you'd probably be guillotined, and the only chance of saving you depended on him knowing all the details.

“Well, I may have done the wrong thing, sir, but I then told him all I know—about the Corporal's brother, and how you and Staff had gone off to Amiens with Louis, and how you'd passed the despatches back to Boulogne. At the end of it all he seemed very upset; he turned to the Captain of the frigate and said, ‘We've got what we wanted, but it's cost us young Ramage: those damned French will chop his head off—probably have already. Damme, we can't afford to lose young men like him!'

“Well, sir, I hadn't much hope for you when we left Boulogne, and hearing his Lordship say that put the seal on it. When I got back on board the Boulogne
Marie
that night and told Slushy, he wouldn't believe it though—credit where credit's due. He reckoned that Louis was a match for them French policemen. Seems he was right!”

The hiss of a bow wave, the rattle of blocks and the flap of a sail high overhead made Ramage realize with a sudden shock which turned his stomach to water that the dark patch on the
Marie
's larboard bow was a large ship steering north. A blinding flash and thud warned him that she had opened fire.

“Wear round and run inshore!” Ramage shouted at Dyson. “That was only a warning shot!”

Dyson thrust the tiller over and Jackson leapt to overhaul the mainsheet. Rossi, Louis and Stafford scrambled up out of the cuddy as the
Marie
's bow began to swing.

The jib flapped and a moment later the big boom slammed over and the
Marie
heeled in response. Hurriedly the jib was sheeted in and Ramage looked astern. She was a frigate—that much was clear in the darkness—and the
Marie
's sudden right-angled jink had taken her by surprise: already she had ploughed on to the north and the fishing-boat was safe from her broadside guns, though alert men at the stern-chasers might get in a shot.

As the frigate disappeared in the darkness, occasional shafts of moonlight through the clouds lit up her sails. No, she wasn't wearing round after the
Marie.
Ramage looked round warily to the south: no, she wasn't leaving the
Marie
to a consort following along astern.

“Sleepy lot over there,” Jackson commented to Stafford. “They left it too late to fire that warning shot.”

“I ain't complaining,” the Cockney said. “So ‘elp me, ‘ow the ‘ell are we going to tell ‘em we're reelly friends?”

Ramage strained his eyes in the darkness as a cloud across the moon hid the frigate's sails. There was something damned strange about the whole episode. Her Captain was not sleepy—he was wide awake and probably standing on the quarterdeck with his night-glass: no one patrolling close inshore, watching for French ships trying to run the blockade, was anything but alert, and all his officers and lookouts too. There would be six lookouts—two on each bow, beam and quarter, and with a moon like this probably a man aloft as well.

Yet that warning shot had been fired astern of the
Marie
and much too late. It was fired when the frigate was in no position to cut her off and almost too far past to loose off a broadside. Given that she could not stop the
Marie
escaping, why fire a warning shot? Why fire when there was no time to wait for a response and, if none was forthcoming, follow it up with a broadside?

Ramage shrugged his shoulders: perhaps he was making too much of it: the frigate may have just fired a random shot to frighten a French fishing smack back into port, having spotted her at the last moment against the land and decided not to bother with a broadside. For the moment he was thankful that they were all still alive. But it was a long way to the English coast and that frigate might well turn south again, and she was certainly not the only one out patrolling that night.

They must assume that the
Marie
would meet her again. They could try to sneak out and hope for the best, risking the frigate thundering down and firing a broadside that would lift the
Marie
out of the water and scatter the pieces like driftwood. Or they could try getting close enough—waving a lantern, perhaps—and hailing her, explaining that the
Marie
was English. British, rather. He put himself in a frigate captain's position and knew it would not work until they were within a few miles of the English coast. No frigate captain would believe a British fishing-boat could be sailing close along the French coast: he would immediately assume it was some sort of trick and open fire—and who could blame him: why risk a frigate for the sake of some wild shouts from a fishing smack?

One thing was certain: the
Marie
couldn't spend the rest of the night sailing up and down the coast off Le Tréport. Of the alternatives, trying to sneak across the Channel was the most likely to succeed. Once again Ramage was puzzled by the frigate's last-minute warning shot. It was as if she had been expecting to find a ship to seaward of her, and had only spotted the
Marie
inshore at the last moment …

“We're getting close to the beach, sir,” Dyson murmured. “Water gets a bit shallow!”

“Very well, bear up and run south, parallel with the shore. Jackson, Stafford—stand by the mainsheet; Rossi and Louis—jib sheet!”

Dyson leaned on the tiller and the seamen heaved in the sheets until both jib and mainsail were trimmed to the wind now on their starboard beam. The clouds, still broken up, let patches of moonlight skim across the surface of the sea, but there was no sign now of the frigate's sails over on the starboard quarter: she must have carried on northwards, probably intending to go up as far as Boulogne before turning south again. It was idle to speculate; all that mattered for the moment was that she had not turned back to investigate the
Marie.
No doubt her Captain assumed that she was a French fishing-boat and had scurried back into port.

Scurry back into port! Yes, the last thing the frigate Captain would expect was that she would go boldly offshore, heading for the middle of the Channel. Do the unexpected—surprise won battles. Ramage knew that most of his successful actions in the past owed more to achieving surprise than to clever planning.

“Stand by at the sheets! Dyson, we're going to bear up again: I want to get well out into the Channel. Forget that damned compass; just get her bowling along hard on the wind. Southwest on the starboard tack should keep us clear of the frigate.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Dyson said crisply as the other four men made sure the sheets were clear.

For the first time in many days (weeks, in fact) Ramage felt exhilarated: he was back at sea, making his own decisions and with a good crew. Admittedly the vessel he commanded was very small, but it was only a matter of scale: a fishing-boat escaping from a frigate; a frigate escaping from a ship of the line … The problem was the same.

The men were ready and he gave Dyson the order. The
Marie
slowly edged round to starboard and the men grunted and swore as they hardened in the sheets, while Dyson edged her closer and closer to the wind. With the sheets turned up on the cleats, Ramage looked questioningly at Dyson: the
Marie
seemed a little sluggish.

“She likes a bit more jib, sir,” he said almost apologetically. “Bit ‘ard-mouthed she is, at the moment.”