"Ramage's Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pope Dudley)

CHAPTER SEVEN

The description of him dressed in a French fisherman's smock and trousers, and standing on the quarterdeck of one of the King's ships with his wife beside him wearing a badly torn dress cobbled up with sailmaker's thread, would soon, Ramage mused, be another story added to the fund of bizarre yarns which already seemed to surround him.

At least a westerly gale was not screaming over the ebb tide and kicking up the hideous sea for which Brest Roads were notorious; at least the stars were out and the moon had risen. And if there had been no war, he would regard this as the start of a pleasant voyage. But now in an instant it could all turn out very difficult. If one of those anchored French ships opened fire and the three forts lining the cliffs along the Gullet followed suit, then in this light wind the Murex would be battered ...

He picked up the speaking trumpet and the coppery smell seemed to complete the series of memories taking him back to the Calypso, to the Triton and then to the Kathleen.

'Let that cable run, Mr Phillips ... Foretopmen there: let fall the foretopsail.... Stand by, maintopmen!'

Strange orders, but ones carefully phrased because he had so few seamen. That delivery of potatoes had saved him - knowing how many men he would have available to handle the ship had allowed him to work out a rough general quarter, watch and station bill for two lieutenants, master and eleven seamen.

And what a bill! Seven sail handlers: four seamen for letting fall the foretopsail, three for loosing the maintopsail. Then the foretopmen had to slide down swiftly from aloft to haul on the halyards, and as soon as the yard was up, they had to hoist the jibs and staysails. The maintopmen in turn had to race down to tend their own halyard and then help the four remaining seamen who were to haul on sheets and braces to trim the yards and sails.

Of those four, two would have been helping the second lieutenant, Bridges, to let the anchor cable run ... The master, Phillips, would be on the fo'c'sle, making sure that the cable ran out through the hawse without snagging, and the headsails and their sheets did not wrap round things in that tenacious embrace so beloved of moving ropes. And he wondered if Swan, the young first lieutenant who was now waiting at the wheel, could remember how to box the compass in quarterpoints! It was something he would have known when he took his examination for lieutenant and, having passed, would have forgotten it...

Damnation, this wind was light... Better not too strong with such a tiny crew, but he needed enough breeze to get those topsails drawing and give him steerage way over the ebbing tide - by the time the Murex was drawing level with Pointe St Mathieu he would have dodged enough rocks and reefs to sink a fleet. The first of them was just abreast Fort de Delec, the dark walls of which he could already see perched up on the cliff on his starboard hand.

Ah! At last the foretopsail tumbled down as the men slashed the gaskets. He had made sure they had knives (it meant raiding the galley) to save valuable time: untying knotted gaskets (it was sure to be the last one that jammed) could cost three or four minutes.

Two men were coming down hand over hand along the forestay! The other two were coming down the usual way, using the shrouds. A puff of wind caught the sail so that it flapped like a woman shaking a damp sheet. To Ramage's ears, by now abnormally sensitive to noise, it seemed every ship in the anchorage must hear the Murex's foretopsail sounding like a ragged broadside.

Now the maintopsail flopped down with the elegant casualness of canvas in light airs.

A rapid thumping, as though a great snake was escaping from a box, ended with a splash and a cheerful hail from Phillips: 'Cable away, sir!'

'Very well, Mr Phillips,' Ramage called through the trumpet and warned Swan at the wheel, 'Be ready to meet her - the bow will pay off to starboard but for the moment the ebb has got her!'

The brig, with her bow now heading north as though she wanted to sail up the Penfeld river and into Brest, was in fact being swept sideways by the ebb down the Gullet towards the wide entrance, a dozen miles away and stretching five miles or so between Pointe St Mathieu on the starboard side and the Camaret peninsula to larboard.

The seamen were like ants at the base of each mast. Up, up, up! The heavy foretopsail yard inched its way upwards on the halyard and then a bellowed order saw it settle and the sheets tautening, giving shape to the sail.

The wind was still west; the feathers on the string of corks forming the telltale on the larboard side reassured him about that as they bobbed in the moonlight.

'I can feel some weight on the wheel now, sir,' Swan reported, as Ramage saw the maintopsail yard begin its slow rise up the mast. Damnation take the foretopmen, they had to make haste with those headsails: brigs were the devil to tack without jibs and staysail drawing, and already the Murex was gathering way as though she wanted to run up on the rocks in front of the Ch#226;teau.

Ramage lifted the speaking trumpet. He had to make them get a move on without frightening them into making silly mistakes. 'Foretopsail sheet men - aft those sheets! Brace men - brace sharp up!" Strangely-worded orders, but he had no afterguard.

Now he could see the sail outlined against the stars and it was setting perfectly, and Swan was cautiously turning the wheel a few more spokes.

'Maintopsail sheet men, are you ready? Take the strain - now, run it aft! Another six feet! Heave now, heave. Right, belay that! Now, you men at the braces, sharp up!'

The flying jib, jib and staysail were crawling up their stays - with this light breeze and their canvas blanketed by the foretopsail, three of the four seamen were hauling a halyard each...

'Amidships there! Hands to the headsail sheets ... Take the strain... ' He watched as the sails slowed down and then stopped their climb up the stays. 'Right, aft those headsail sheets ... Foretopmen, pass them the word because I can't see a stitch of the canvas from here!'

Cheerful shouts from forward and the moonlight showing the topsails taking up gentle curves indicated that his unorthodox method of getting under way and passing sail orders to a handful of seamen, all of whom would normally be doing just one of those jobs, was working.

'Don't pinch her, Mr Swan,' Ramage warned the first lieutenant. 'Just keep her moving fast, and then we'll have control. We'll have to put in a few dozen tacks before you put the helm down for Plymouth.'

Ramage paused and wiped the mouthpiece of the speaking trumpet, which was green with verdigris.

'You nearly ran down the matelots in the fishing boat as you were setting the maintopsail,' Sarah said. 'They hadn't made much progress.'

'I didn't hear you reporting,' Ramage teased.

'No, you didn't,' she said shortly. 'I didn't start the Revolution or the war.'

'Remind me to tell you how much I am enjoying our honeymoon, but first we must tack.'

And, he thought to himself, if the Murex hangs in irons we'll drift on to the rocks on the headland in front of the arsenal and opposite the Ch#226;teau: the current sets strongly across them on the ebb.

A quick word to Swan had the wheel turning, and he could hear the creak of rudder pintles working on the gudgeons, an indication of a quiet night.

Then he gave a series of shouted commands to the men at sheets and braces and slowly (too slowly it seemed at first, convincing him he had left it too late) the Murex's bow began to swing to larboard, into the wind ...

'Not too much helm, Mr Swan, you're supposed to be turning her, not stopping her ...' A first lieutenant should know that. Now the jibs and staysail were flapping across.

'Headsail sheets, there!'

The men knew what to do; that much was obvious in the way the sails had been set. So now he need give only brief orders which took care of the trimming.

'Braces! Altogether now, haul! Now the sheets!'

A glance ahead showed the brig now steady on the other tack.

'Mr Swan,' Ramage said quietly, walking over to the wheel, 'I think you can get another point or two to windward...'

He watched the luff of the mainsail and then the leech.

'And another couple of spokes?'

Swan turned the wheel two more spokes but his movements lacked certainty: he was clearly nervous.

'Come now, Mr Swan,' Ramage said, a sharper note in his voice. 'I don't expect to have to give the first lieutenant compass courses to steer to windward. Now look'ee, you can lay the Pointe des Espagnols - that's the headland on your larboard bow.'

With that he turned away and said to Sarah, 'Can you see L'Espoir over there at anchor? I think she's gone: sailed while we were having our trouble with the bosun.'

She turned and looked over the larboard quarter at all the ships moonlit against the black line of low cliffs with the town of Plougastel in the distance. Unused to allowing for a change in bearings she took two or three minutes before finally reporting: 'No, she's not there. But she can only be...'

'Yes,' Ramage said, 'half an hour or so,' and noted it was time to tack again: the brig was moving along well and the ebb was helping hurry them seaward. He went over to Swan and gave him the new heading for when they had gone about.

'Follow the cliff along from Brest. You see the village of Portzic? Now, just beyond that next headland - you see the building? That's Fort de Delec. You should be able to lay it, but if a messenger has reached them they'll open fire. And just beyond, on top of the cliff, is the Lion Battery. If the fort and battery begin firing at us, we'll tack over to the other side.'

There was no need to tell Swan that on the other tack they would be heading for the Cornouaille Battery on the Camaret peninsula, and if the fire from that became hot enough to force them to tack northwestward again back to the Pointe St Mathieu side, they would be steering for the next fort, at Mengam, with three isolated and large rocks also waiting in the fairway for them...

The Murex went about perfectly: the headsails slapped across as the bow came round and were swiftly sheeted in; both topsails were braced sharp up on the larboard tack; Swan moved the wheel back and forth three or four spokes and then reported: 'I can lay a bit to windward of the Lion Battery, sir.'

Already the Ch#226;teau was dropping astern fast and Ramage watched the irregular shape of Fort de Delec. Distance was always hard to estimate in the darkness, but a mile? At night an object usually seemed closer - so to the French gunners the Murex would seem to be just within range. Just? Well within range, and Sarah murmured: 'I imagine Frenchmen staring along the barrels of guns...'

It seemed to be tempting fate to make a reassuring comment, and anyway she was not frightened. 'If they're going to open fire, it'll be in the next two or three minutes,' he said.

She held his arm in an unexpected gesture, and he was startled to find she was trembling. 'Will it look bad if I go below if they start shooting?'

He gripped her hand. 'Of course not. But it will be more frightening.'

'More frightening? I don't understand.'

'Dearest, if you stay on deck and see where the shot fall, you'll see there's no danger. If you go below you'll be waiting for the next shot to come through the deck and knock your head off!'

'I feel cold and shaky all of a sudden,' she said. 'Not frightened exactly. Apprehensive, perhaps.'

'When you shoot a man with a pistol you usually feel shaky afterwards,' Ramage said dryly, and added: 'I feel cold and shaky every time after I've been in action. I think everyone does.'

He looked up at Fort de Delec again. He felt he could see down the muzzles of the guns. Yes, there was the straight line of the walls; there were the embrasures. The moon had risen high enough now that he knew he would see the antlike movement of people if the guns were being loaded and trained round. It was a confounded nuisance commanding a ship which had no nightglass and no telescopes. No log or muster book for that matter - the telescopes had presumably been looted, and all the ship's papers would have been taken away by the French authorities. And charts - well, the only relevant one he had glanced at by lantern light just before getting under way, 'A Draught of the Road and Harbour of Brest with the adjacent Coast', must have been copied from a captured French one, but even then gave only one line of soundings from the town of Brest right along the Gullet, stopping as it reached the first of the three rocks, Mengam, and the man at the lead could be calling out twenty fathoms amidships as the bow hit the rock.

Another couple of minutes and they would tack again and then he wanted plenty of lookouts. With luck he would be able to leave Mengam safely to one side so that on the next tack to the northwest he could pass close to the last of the three rocks, which was in fact a small reef appropriately named Les Fillettes.

The Cornouaille Battery was silent, but that was to be expected: a boat would have to be sent over to the Camaret peninsula to raise the alarm, although they would pick it up from the other forts. This next tack would bring them within range of Fort de Mengam. Was the fort named after its silent ally in the middle of the Gullet, or the other way about?

He lifted the speaking trumpet as Sarah murmured: 'Anyone raising the alarm at these forts and batteries would use the same road we rode along that afternoon from Pointe St Mathieu.'

'Now my dear, you can understand my interest in the number of guns each of them mounted.'

'You didn't explain,' she said.

'I'm always interested in French forts. I hardly expected we'd be sailing out in these circumstances!'

She shivered and turned to look back at the town and harbour. 'No, you were hoping eventually to sail your own ship in, on some wild escapade.'

'Yes,' he admitted, 'one never ignores a chance to learn about an enemy, but I prefer having my wife beside me!'

'You are being more polite than a new husband needs to be: I am a nuisance!'

He began shouting orders through the speaking trumpet and once again the Murex's bow swung across the eye of the wind to the southwest: once again straining men hauled at the sheets and braces to trim the topsails. If only he could set the courses as well; then with more than double the amount of canvas drawing the brig would be out of the Gullet and into the Atlantic, passing the Pointe St Mathieu to starboard and the shoals to larboard off the Camaret peninsula, like a stoat after a rabbit.

He walked up to the mainmast, partly to leave Swan on his own and help him gain a confidence which had probably been badly battered by the mutiny, and partly to place extra lookouts. He called for Auguste, Albert and Louis.

'You know the Mengam?' he asked.

'Yes, captain, I was just coming to warn you: it is very near.'

'And the one beyond, and then Les Fillettes?'

'Yes, I know them all; I have fished around them dozens of times. In fact the Mengam is fine on the bow. You - yes, you can see it. Look ...'

He stood beside Ramage, who saw they would pass clear and instructed the three Frenchmen to watch for other rocks. He walked aft to point it out to Swan, who seemed to have benefited from being left alone at the wheel. He had more life in him; he said, in the first time he had spoken except in answer to a question: 'I thought it'd be the batteries we'd be dodging, sir, not the rocks.'

Ramage then remembered that the Murex had been brought in while it was still daylight. 'You were able to watch the scenery as you came in?'

'No choice, sir: we - those who had not mutinied - were all penned up on the fo'c'sle.'

'What about the mutineers?'

Swan laughed at the memory. 'Well, the French who came on board drove them all below. You see, sir, I was the only person in the ship who spoke any French, so when the French boarded us and asked why we were flying a white flag, I said some of the men had "misbehaved".'

'So they thought we - the officers and the loyal ship's company - were bringing the ship in and handing her over, and the mutineers had been trying to stop us. So for a couple of hours or so the mutineers were knocked around - until we anchored off Brest and English-speaking Frenchmen came out!'

Ramage calculated that they would be clear of the Gullet on the next tack, and Sarah joined him as he walked forward to pick up the speaking trumpet. As he gave the first orders for the tack which would turn the Murex to the northwest, Auguste came up and pointed ahead.

'Sir, Les Fillettes are ahead. You will pass clear when you tack.'

'Thank you, Auguste. Ah yes, I see them.'

There was no reason to point them out to Swan, who was now giving the appearance of enjoying himself. The moonlight was strong enough to give a clear picture of the deck, and as they tacked the men were quicker at freeing a rope or making it fast on cleat, kevil or belaying pin.

Now Swan was steadying the ship on the new tack as sheets and braces were trimmed, and as Ramage put the speaking trumpet down beside one of the guns and gave a contented sigh, Sarah said: 'We're almost out of this beastly river. Is that -?'

'Pointe St Mathieu? Yes. It seems a long while ago...'

'In some ways. Certainly, as we sat up there in the sun and looked out across here and up towards Ushant, I never expected to be sailing out of the Iroise in the dead of night. Yet' - she paused, and he was not sure if she was choosing her words carefully or deciding whether or not to say it - 'yet the way you looked out at the Black Rocks, and Ushant, and across this estuary to the Camaret peninsula - you were recording it, not looking at it like a visitor. You were noting it down in the pilot book in your head, ready for use when the war started again. Our ride back to Jean-Jacques' - you were more interested in the forts and batteries than anything else!'

'No,' he protested mildly, 'I saw as much beauty as you did. I just made a note of the things that might be trying to kill me one day, like the guns in the batteries and forts.'

'But has all that really helped you now - as we sail out?'

'Oh yes, although I was gambling that the commandant of the port, or the commander of the artillery, or the commander of the garrisons, would all disagree about whose responsibility it was to warn the forts.'

'Do you have to gamble when you're on your honeymoon?'

He squeezed her arm. 'It's better for the family fortunes to gamble with roundshot rather than dice!'

Sarah laughed and nodded. 'Yes, I suppose so: if a roundshot knocks her husband's head off, at least his widow has the estate. But if he gambles at backgammon tables she has a husband with a head, but no bed to sleep in!'

Ramage stood at the taffrail of the Murex in the darkness and mentally drew a cross on an imaginary chart to represent the brig's position. She was now clearing the gulf of the Iroise, which stretched from the high cliffs and ruined abbey of Pointe St Mathieu over there to starboard across to the Camaret peninsula to larboard.

Ahead was the Atlantic, and the English Channel was to the north, round Ushant, which stood like a sentry off the northwestern tip of France. The Bay of Biscay, with Spain and Portugal beyond, was to the south. Astern, to everyone's relief, was Brest, and about 300 miles due east of it was Paris.

So that was it: from here, a tack out to the northwestward for the rest of the night and then dawn would reveal Ushant to the northeast, so that he could then bear away. He then had a choice: either he could run with a soldier's wind to the Channel Islands to get more men (having the advantage of a short voyage with such a small ship's company), or he could stretch north (perhaps nor'nor'east, he had not looked at the chart yet) for Falmouth or Plymouth.

The advantage of either port was that once he reported and handed over the Murex, he and Sarah could post to London or go over to the family home at St Kew, not far from either port. On second thoughts London would be better: their Lordships would certainly need written reports, and it would do no harm to be available when Lord St Vincent read them, concerning both his escape and the size and readiness of the French fleet in Brest, and the Murex episode.

Anyway, the Murex was now making a good six or seven knots; the courses had been set once they were safely out in the estuary and drawing well. A couple of seamen at the wheel were keeping the ship sailing fast, with Swan occasionally peering down at one or the other of the dimly lit compasses in the binnacle, his confidence restored.

Sarah was asleep down in the captain's cabin; Ramage himself was weary but warm at last, thanks to Sarah finding a heavy cloak in the captain's cabin and bringing it up to him. Dawn was not far off and the sky was clear with the moon still bright, although there was now a chill greyness that seemed to be trying to edge aside the black of night. The Murex was not just butting wind waves with her weather bow and scattering them in spray that drifted across like a scotch mist, salting the lips and making the eyes sore: now she was lifting over Atlantic swells that were born somewhere out in the deep ocean.

Very well, he told himself, the time had come to make the decision so that the moment daylight revealed Ushant on the horizon, he could give Swan the new course, for Falmouth, Plymouth or the Channel Islands.

Or southwestward, to start a 4,000-mile voyage to Cayenne, without orders, without much chance of success, to try to rescue Jean-Jacques and the other fifty or so people declared enemies of the French Republic?

He walked back and forth beside the taffrail and then stood looking astern at the Murex's curling wake. There was one thing in the brig's favour. One thing in his favour, he corrected himself (there was no point in trying to shift the responsibility on to the poor Murex). Yes, the one thing in his favour was that he knew he was only a few hours behind L'Espoir. As a frigate she was much bigger, but more important she had fifty extra people on board, all of whom had to be kept under guard. So the frigate would be carrying extra men, seamen or soldiers, to make up the guard. Twenty-five? Extra in the sense that they were in addition to the normal ship's company. Whoa, not so fast; she was armed enfl#251;te, so she would have only the guns on the upperdeck, say half a dozen 12-pounders. And that - being armed en fl#251;te - meant she needed only sufficient men to fight six or eight guns, not the thirty or so which had been removed to make room for the prisoners. Against that, the French in Brest were very short of seamen: that had been the last piece of information given out by that wretched bosun before Sarah shot him. The Commandant de l'Arm#233;e navale de Brest would certainly favour fighting ships at the expense of transports like L'Espoir.

Yet the French were in a hurry to get these prisoners on their way to Cayenne before the British re-established their standing blockade of Brest, which would otherwise have made the capture of L'Espoir a distinct possibility. In turn that could also mean that these fifty prisoners were of considerable importance: people that Bonaparte wanted out of France at any cost and incarcerated in Devil's Island.

So apart from the importance of Jean-Jacques - which from the Royalist point of view was considerable - what about the others? What value would the British government put on them? In other words, if Captain Ramage acting without orders attempted with a brig and a dozen or so men a task for which a fully-manned frigate would not be too much, and succeeded, what then? Pats on the head, a page in the London Gazette, a column or so in the next issue of the Naval Chronicle, the grudging but heavily-qualified approval of the First Lord.

But if Captain Ramage failed in this self-appointed role of rescuer riding a (borrowed) white horse, what then? Well, the resulting court-martial would make the trial establishing his father as a scapegoat for the government look like a hunt cancelled because of heavily frozen ground. At best, Captain Ramage would spend the rest of his life on half-pay. At worst? Well, at least being cashiered with the disgrace of being 'rendered incapable of further service in his Majesty's Naval Service'.

Yet it really boiled down to ignoring the Admiralty. By chance he had been able to recapture a British brig from the enemy, and without his activity the Murex would have been added to the French Navy. That was where the chance ended. Did he owe it to Jean-Jacques to try to rescue him? A debt of honour? That was using a rather high-flown phrase, but supposing Ramage had been seized and taken off to some improbable prison, and Jean-Jacques had escaped and knew where he was? Jean-Jacques would attempt a rescue. That was all there was to it, really, although the Admiralty would certainly not agree.

To make an enormous dog-leg course to call at Plymouth to get provisions, men and water would wreck everything because it would probably mean that a couple of frigates would be sent in his place, and a vital week lost - at least a week; more if there was bad weather. It would take a couple of days to convince the port admiral at Plymouth of the importance of such a rescue and pass a message to the Admiralty (though with the new telegraph, Plymouth could send a signal to London and get a reply in a few hours), then watering and provisioning the frigates would take another day or so ... By the time they were clear of the Chops of the Channel (and perhaps driven back by a westerly storm or gale) L'Espoir would be a third of the way to Cayenne; a third of the way to the #206;le du Diable. At this moment, though, the Murex brig was only a matter of hours behind her. Yet without enough men to do any good and perhaps short of provisions and water. But no more than fifty miles ... If L'Espoir had careless or apathetic officers of the deck, poorly set sails and inattentive men at the wheel, plus the feeling that once clear of Brest they were safe from the Royal Navy, the smaller Murex, sailed hard, would be able to make up the gap.

'I'm going below for half an hour,' he told Swan. 'Report when you can see Ushant.'

Sarah was awake, unused to the swinging cot, which was little more than a large hammock with a shallow, open-topped frame fitted in it, like a box in a net bag.

'I preferred going to and from India,' she said teasingly. 'A proper bed is more comfortable.'

'You wait until there's rough weather. Going to windward in a blow and that cot will swing comfortably, while a fixed bed tosses you out.'

'How do I get out of it, anyway?'

'You don't; you're marooned!'

'Do you want to get some sleep?' she offered, sitting up with her tawny hair tousled, naked because she had only the clothes she had worn in the fishing boat. The lantern light seemed to gild her and he turned away quickly, reassuring her and telling her to stay in the cot. Stay in the cot, he thought to himself, or the captain will not concentrate on his charts ...

He put the lantern on the hook in the beam just forward of the desk. The charts were rolled and stowed vertically in a rack fitted on one side of the desk. Checking what charts were there meant removing each one and partly unrolling it. He sat at the desk and made a start. English Channel, western section, including the Scilly Islands; English Channel, eastern section, including the mouth of the Thames and the Medway. North Sea ... in four sections. Ireland, the southern half. The Channel Islands. St Malo to Ouessant (the French spelling and the detail showed it was probably copied from a captured one). Ushant to Brest and south to Douarnenez... Those were probably the charts for her last patrol... Half a dozen more left. North Atlantic, southern section...

Ramage unrolled it. It covered from the southwestern corner of Spain to the eastern side of the West Indian islands, and down to the Equator, yet giving very little detail of the South American coast. There was Trinidad - which anyway could be identified by its shape. No reference to Cayenne, though; it must be about there, just a kink in the ink line of the coast, north of Brazil.

He looked at the remaining charts. A French one of the islands of St Barth#233;lemy, St Martin (with the southern half owned by the Dutch and given its Dutch name, St Maarten), Anguilla and well to the north, just a speck, Sombrero. Then another two of the group just to the southward, Nevis and St Christopher. And two more, St Eustatius and Saba. A detailed chart of Plymouth ... and Falmouth ... and, finally, the Texel, showing the northwestern corner of the Netherlands.

All in all, Ramage thought wryly, he was no better off than he would be with a blank sheet of paper and his memory; in fact he was going to have to draw up a chart or two for himself. For the moment, though he had to try to put himself in the French captain's place.

When sailing from Europe to the West Indies or the northern part of South America, the trick was to pick up the Trade winds as soon as possible without getting becalmed in the Doldrums. Which meant sailing where you could be reasonably sure of finding steady winds. Every captain and every master had his own invisible signpost in the Atlantic; a sign which said 'Turn southwest here; this is where the northeast Trade winds begin.'

For Ramage it was 25° North latitude, 25° West longitude. And - he took a pencil from the desk drawer and a crumpled sheet of paper which he smoothed out enough to make it usable.

According to the copied French chart, St Louis church in the centre of Brest, just north of the Ch#226;teau, was 48° 23' 22" North, 4° 29' 27" West. That, within a mile, was where L'Espoir had sailed from, and she was bound first to the magic spot, 25° North, 25° West. Which ... was ... about ... yes, roughly seventeen hundred miles to the south-southwest.

Then, from the magic point it was to Cayenne ... about ... another 2,000 miles, steering southwest by west. Say 4,000 miles altogether, and let no one think that steering southwest by west from the magic point would bring him or his ship to Cayenne: he would probably start running out of the Trades by the time he reached 12° North; from then on he would be trying to fight his way south against a foul current which ran northwest along the coast of Brazil. Caught in the right place, it helped; but if the wind played about, whiffling round the compass (which it could do in those latitudes) then the current would sweep the helpless ship up towards the islands - towards Barbados, for example, where the British commander-in-chief was probably lying at anchor in Carlisle Bay.

Ramage looked at his brief calculations again and then screwed them up.

Sarah asked: 'When do you think we shall be in Plymouth if this weather holds, dearest?'

'In about three months.'

'No, seriously. Our families will be worrying.'

'I expect the Rockleys will be worrying about you, but mine will make a wrong guess and give a sigh of relief that I am safely locked up in a French prison while they will expect you to be lodging with a respectable French family.'

'Is that how it would have been, normally?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I should think so. Anyway, my parents will not be worrying, and I'm sure as soon as they get the word they will be calling on your people.'

'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.'