Ramage And The Drum Beat (15 page)

But as far as Ramage was concerned, the lower decks of all Spanish men o’ war were worse than the manger of a British ship when it was full of pigs and cattle: they were, as far as he could see, scrubbed but rarely, and pieces of vegetables and particularly tough meat the seamen could not chew were tossed over their shoulders and left rotting in odd corners. And always the reek of garlic – bad enough if you stood too near a Spaniard – grasping you with invisible tentacles if you went below.

Ramage had, therefore, been relieved to hear the outraged complaints of his men the first night on board: Jackson swore he’d never ever had a nightmare in which a ship was so filthy, and Will Stafford swore in his broad Cockney that by comparison the Fleet Ditch smelled like a young maiden’s boudoir, even if it did carry most of London’s muck and ordure into the Thames. From then on he had always referred to going below as ‘visiting the Fleet’.

Jackson came up and said, ‘Guess what’s for supper.’

‘Bean soup.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Well, we’ve had it for every meal so far.’

The admiral’s secretary called them over and with him was the flagship’s first lieutenant, who did not speak English.

‘The captain has given orders that you are free to go on shore as soon as a boat is available – as soon as the admiral’s suite and certain officers have left the ship,’ he said.

‘Please thank the captain – and the admiral.’

‘Of course. You will all stay at a particular inn for the time being.’ He paused. ‘It is a condition of your release that you stay at this inn until you leave Spain.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Ramage, ‘but how can we pay an innkeeper’s bill? We’ve no money – the English haven’t paid us for months.’

‘I know that: I read the ship’s books. The admiral has generously given orders that you’ll be given the equivalent of the pay owing to you. The lieutenant has the money and I have a copy of the amount due to each of you. I shall give you the copy and you will issue it to the men. This,’ he said to Jackson, ‘will be agreeable to you and the others?’

‘Oh yes, sir,’ Jackson said respectfully, ‘we all trust Nick.’

‘Very well.’ He gave Ramage a slip of paper, and spoke to the lieutenant, who handed Ramage a small canvas bag which, from its weight, obviously contained the money, and held out a piece of paper.

‘The receipt for the money. You will sign it,’ said the translator. ‘Come to my cabin. I have a pen there.’

Ramage would have liked to have counted the money to see how much less there was in the bag than stated on the receipt, but decided not to in case it delayed them getting on shore.

An hour later the eight former Kathleens stepped out of a boat on to the quay and followed a Spanish seaman to the inn – a typical crimp’s establishment. If it had been at Portsmouth, Plymouth or in the Medway towns, a seaman using it would have been on his guard against the innkeeper seeing him and his mates to bed drunk and calling a crimp (if he wasn’t a crimp on his own account) who would then sell the drunken bodies to the skipper of a merchantman short of crew, or if times were hard, to a naval press gang.

The eight of them were given two rooms, and Ramage gathered them all in one of them to issue the pay.

‘I signed a receipt for the Spanish dollar equivalent of the pay owing,’ he said. ‘But there won’t be that many dollars in this bag.’

‘No,’ said Stafford. ‘The purser, the officer who gave you the money, and that translator… That makes at least three of ’em who’ve already took a reef in it.’

Ramage counted out the coins. Exactly a third of the amount had been abstracted.

‘They’re as bad as our chaps,’ Stafford said bitterly. ‘Every – oh, beggin’ yer pardon, Nick…’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Ramage, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. But everyone has to take a third less than is due to him.’

With that he shared out the money then said, pointing to the door, ‘Jackson, just check…’

Jackson whipped the door open, but no one was eavesdropping.

‘Right,’ said Ramage. ‘For a moment I am your captain again and I must tell you that although the Spanish have freed you, you are still subject to the Articles of War: you are still under my command. Now, any one of you can sneak off to the Spanish authorities and reveal who I am. No one can stop you. The Articles of War can hardly be enforced here, so only your personal loyalty can make you obey my orders. Yet we all have a duty to perform, and I for one propose doing it. But I’m not forcing any of you to follow me: all I ask is that those who don’t want to come with me – those who wish to stay in Spain or go elsewhere – I want those men to say so now, and do nothing to give me away. As soon as it’s safe to do so, I’ll free them from their obligations. Now – who wants to go?’

The Portuguese seaman looked shamefaced.

‘I haven’t seen my family for three years, sir, and the frontier…’

‘Very well, you can go.’

‘You understand, sir?’

Ramage held out his hand as an indication of his sincerity and the Portuguese gripped it eagerly. ‘I promise you, sir, I shall never say anything.’

‘I know,’ Ramage said.

‘Will you have to–’

‘Put you down as “Run”? Officially I have to, but I’ve a bad memory for names, Ferraro. When the time comes it’ll be hard to remember who were prisoners and who were taken to the flagship.’

He looked round. ‘Anyone else?’

No one moved. It was hard to be sure. Among the remaining six men was there just one crafty enough to realize that by feigning loyalty and discovering Ramage’s plan, he’d have useful information to sell to the Spanish for a high price? It was hard to be sure; very hard.

‘Very well. Now, all of you go off and get your supper. Go steady with the liquor – remember it loosens tongues: a quart of red wine could put Spanish nooses round all our necks.’

The men trooped off, jingling their dollars, but Jackson stayed behind.

‘Well, Jackson, can we trust them all?’

‘Every single man, sir – including Ferraro. You can’t blame him for wanting to go.’

‘Of course not, and I don’t.’

‘Would it be impertinent if I asked about the plan, sir?’

‘You may, but there isn’t one yet. Obviously I’ve got to pass all we can find out about the Spanish Fleet to Sir John as soon as possible. At the moment I don’t know how.’

‘It’s not far to the Rock, sir. We could get horses…’

‘Too dangerous – and too uncomfortable. A long ride and then the risk of crossing to the Rock. If the Spanish didn’t shoot us our own sentries would.’

‘That leaves the sea, sir.’

‘Yes,’ said Ramage. ‘We’re sailors, not cavalrymen. Ships don’t need sleep or fodder. But I need both at the moment. We’ll have a look round the port in the morning and see what it has to offer.’

A good night’s sleep had not refreshed Ramage: he had been at sea so long that lying in a bed that did not move in a room that did not creak was both unnatural and disturbing, and wakefulness had only emphasized that he shared the straw mattress with a number of small creatures entirely un-Spanish in their persistence and capacity to cause irritation.

He looked round the room at the seven men and nodded to the Portuguese. ‘Since you are leaving us, Ferraro, what I have to talk to these men about doesn’t concern you; but you can lend a hand by sitting in the parlour and watching the stairs so no one can listen at this door.’

As soon as the Portuguese left Ramage looked back at the remaining six men. Motley, cosmopolitan…the words hardly described them. Well, he’d better get started, although he was going to sound like a pompous parson. The men watching saw only the deep-set brown eyes glancing keenly from one to another. Although he did not know it such was the strength of his personality that not one of them noticed that instead of wearing the blue, gold-trimmed uniform of a lieutenant, their captain was dressed in trousers and shirt even more faded and worn than their own.

‘Men, you know the position because I explained it to you yesterday. You are free: you never need serve in the Royal Navy again. You are all foreigners or, like me,’ he smiled, ‘you have documents declaring you to be foreign subjects. But despite my splendid Protection, I’m still a King’s officer, there’s still a war to fight, and I’ve my duty. Yesterday, with the exception of Ferraro, you all said you wanted to continue serving with me. You’ve had a night to think it over. Has anyone had second thoughts? If so, speak up now. You’ve all served me well, so I’ll never remember names, and you’ll never be marked down as having “Run”. But I warn you if you stay with me, you’ll be no safer than you were in the Kathleen.’

No one spoke; no one looked uncomfortable, as though he wanted to leave but dare not face the others. Jackson had been right. Then Will Stafford finally sucked his teeth – an inevitable preliminary, Ramage realized, before he ever made a remark – and said with a broad grin, ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but yer can’t get rid of us as easy as that!’

‘Thank-you,’ Ramage said almost humbly. Because he was young, he thought the men must be crazy to miss such an opportunity; but at least he had been fair in twice offering them their freedom.

‘S’just one fing, sir,’ Stafford continued, and the tone of his voice made Ramage’s heart sink: here was the catch, here was the condition, the pistol at his head.

‘Well?’ he tried to sound amiable.

‘Our pay, sir, ’Ow do we stand abaht that? We’ve got some dollars, but I’ve ’eard it said yer pay stops if yer gets captured. Don’t seem fair on a man, but that’s wot I’ve ’eard.’

Although Ramage didn’t know the answer, he tried not to let the relief show on his face. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was stopped, and anyway, with the last muster book lost, it’d be hard for a seaman to claim his pay from those scallywag clerks at the Navy Board office. Still, he had money of his own, and he said: ‘You’ll get every penny owing to you: I’ll see to that. At the moment you’re paid up to date, thanks to the Spanish admiral – minus the Spanish purser’s deductions!’

This raised a laugh, since pursers were notorious for their ingenuity in finding reasons for deducting odd amounts from the men’s pay.

‘The deductions wasn’t too bad, sir,’ Stafford said philosophically. ‘We gets a quarter knocked off when we sells our tickets; sometimes more. Just depends.’

And that, Ramage knew, was only too true: one of the more glaring injustices in the Navy was that the seamen were normally paid at the end of a commission, and then usually in the form of tickets which could be cashed only at the pay office of the port where the ship commissioned. This was rarely the port at which they were paid, so the men frequently had to sell their tickets to touts on the quay who paid only a half or three-quarters of the face value and then took them by the bundle to the appropriate port office and cashed them for the full amount.

Six men – three with genuine Protections ‘proving’ them to be Americans (but only one of whom, Jackson, really was); a Genovesi, whose loyalty belonged to the Republic of Genoa (although Ramage remembered that after overrunning it, the French had renamed it something else fairly recently); a Dane whose country maintained a wary neutrality, with the Czar of Russia watching from the east and the French from the south; and finally the West Indian lad.

Although he hadn’t the slightest idea what he was going to do, Ramage knew that all their lives and the success of the plan might eventually depend on the bravery, skill or loyalty of one man; so it was vital he knew more about each of them – except for Jackson, who had more than proved himself already.

Will Stafford, the Cockney with the American Protection, had been one of the liveliest of the Kathleen’s crew. The snub nose stuck on a round face, stocky build and the cocky walk reminding him of a London pigeon, left Ramage wondering about those delicately shaped hands. The man had a habit of rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, as though feeling the quality of a piece of material.

‘What were you before you became a seaman?’

‘Locksmith, sir.’

‘Did you work on the locks at night or in the daytime?’

‘Ah!’ Stafford laughed, ‘always in the daylight sir, nothing unlawful. Me father ’ad a locksmith’s shop in Bridewell Lane.’

‘So you were apprenticed to him?’

‘Father learned me the job, sir, but I wasn’t apprenticed. That was the trouble – the press couldn’t ’ave took me if we’d signed the papers.’

So, thought Ramage, Will Stafford is a seaman simply because he had not signed the indentures that made him an apprentice to his father, and by law apprentices were exempt from the attentions of the press gangs. A locksmith – that perhaps explained those hands. Hmm.

‘Tell me Stafford, could you pick a lock?’

‘Pick a lock, sir?’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘Make, pick or repair – it’s all the same to me.’

Henry Fuller, the tall, angular man squatting untidily on the floor next to Stafford and reminding Ramage of a lobster thrown carelessly in a corner, was a man who thought of little else than fish: to him the sight of a good-sized fish swimming round the ship, easily seen in the clear water of the Mediterranean, was considerably more tempting than a pretty girl on the quay or a pot of ale in a tavern.

Ramage knew from Southwick that when in harbour Fuller regularly asked for permission to fish from the fo’c’sle, and had often heard him cursing gulls or exclaiming at the sight of fish. Fuller rarely spoke: his long thin body, narrow angular face, grey spiky hair and a thin-lipped mouth in which remained only a few tobacco-stained teeth growing at different angles, might have been one of the fish stakes along the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk. Ramage could not distinguish from his accent which of the two counties the man came from.

‘Were you ever a fisherman, Fuller?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘From where?’

‘Born at Mutford, sir; just the back o’ Low’stoff.’

Lowestoft, one of England’s biggest fishing ports, its entrance almost surrounded by sandbanks which shifted with every gale. Yet as a fisherman Fuller too would have been exempt from being pressed.