Ramage And The Drum Beat (16 page)

‘Did you volunteer?’

‘Aye, sir. Bloddy Frenchies – a privateer out of Boolong – stole m’boat. T’was only a little ’un an’ all I ’ad. I ’ate ’em, sir; they stopped m’fishing for good an’ all.’

Ramage looked next at the sallow, black-haired young man of about his own age who came from Genoa. Handsome in a coarse, full-blown way, he was getting fat – no mean feat considering the food served in a King’s ship. Alberto Rossi – he was glad he remembered the name, since the man was always known as ‘Rosey’ – spoke passable English and, next to Stafford, had been the most cheerful man on board.

‘How does a Genovesi come to be in the English Navy?’

‘I am in a French privateer, sir. An English frigate make the capture. The captain say, “Rossi, my man, you’ll get very little food and no pay in a prison hulk, so why not take the bounty and volunteer to serve with me?” He explain the bounty is a special present of five pounds from the King of England, so–’ he shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t you want to see Genoa again?’

Rossi tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger, knowing Ramage understood the gesture. ‘For me, sir, Genova has the unhealthy climate.’

‘What did you do before you became a privateersman?’

‘My father have a share in a schooner, sir. A small share. My five brothers and I are the crew. The captain is a bad man: he have all the other shares.’

‘And…?’

‘He cheat us, sir, and one day he fall overboard and we take the ship into La Spezia. Then we hear by some miracle he is not drown: he swam and is rescue, so we sail very quickly. We sell the schooner to a Frenchman who is wanting to become a privateersman. I stay with the ship.’

‘So in Genoa they tell lies about you: that you’re a pirate and tried to murder your captain?’ Ramage asked ironically.

‘Yes, sir: people will gossip.’

There were two men left, a blond with a bright red face and a nose which, broken at the bridge, was vertical instead of sloping, and the dark-skinned West Indian. The blond was a Dane, but Ramage could not remember his name and asked him.

‘Sven Jensen, sir. They call me “Sixer”.’

‘“Sixer”? Oh yes, five, six, seven. Where do you come from?’

‘Naerum, sir. A village just north of Copenhagen.’

‘And before you went to sea?’

‘Prize-fighter, sir. Win five crowns if you can knock me down in less than half an hour.’

‘Did people ever win?’

‘Never, sir. Not once. I have a good punch. I call it my “Five Crown Punch”.’

So apart from Jackson, Ramage thought, I’ve a locksmith, a fisherman, a pirate who doesn’t baulk at murder, a prize-fighter, and the coloured seaman whom he only knew as Max.

‘What’s your full name, Max, and where do you come from?’

Max grinned cheerfully; he had been looking forward to being questioned and had the answers ready.

‘James Maxton, sir. Age, twenty-one years; religion, Roman Catholic; where born, Belmont; volunteer; rating, ordinary seaman.’

Maxton’s recital showed he had obviously served in several ships and knew the headings under which a man’s details were listed against the name in the muster book.

‘Where’s Belmont?’

‘Grenada, sir. Across the lagoon from the Carenage at St George. It’s a beautiful place, sir,’ he added proudly. ‘And we’ve got big forts to protect us!’

‘And before you went to sea?’

‘I worked in a sugar plantation, sir, cutting cane with a machete.’

‘So you can handle a cutlass, then.’

Jackson gave a low whistle and Ramage glanced at him inquiringly.

‘Toss an apple, sir, and he can slice it in half and then cut one of the pieces in half again before it hits the ground.’

‘I was born with a machete in my hand, sir,’ Maxton said modestly.

So, mused Ramage, these are my six men. All fine seamen, all with another trade – if that was the right word – at their fingertips.

‘Very well, we’ll go down to breakfast. Watch your tongues – the innkeeper probably speaks some English and will report everything he understands to the Spanish authorities.’

* * *

The chill in the morning air warned Ramage that December was approaching, although there was enough sun to remind him that Cartagena was in Spain, with the usual piles of stinking refuse lying about in the streets, a happy hunting ground for flies and beggars and packs of miserable, emaciated dogs. The cathedral bells tolled mournfully as he walked down towards the Plaza del Rey where the main gate through the great walls surrounding the city was guarded by bored sentries who did not bother to challenge him.

Immediately outside the gate was another square with a big rectangular dock on the far side which had only one end open to the sea. A long, low building on the nearer side of the dock had piles of cordage stacked outside it and was probably the rigging store, with the sail loft next to it. At the landward end of the dock was a large timber pond in which great tree trunks floated, seasoning or left in the water to stop the sun’s heat splitting the wood. Next to that two big slipways sloped down to the dock and on one of them shipwrights were busy with adzes shaping new planks to replace rotten ones in the hull of a small schooner.

Turning left and walking seaward he came to the Muralla del Mar, the long quay forming the landward side of the great, almost land-locked harbour. As he glimpsed the white crests of waves through the narrow entrance he saw he’d underestimated just how much Nature had given the harbour almost complete protection.

To his right a peninsula of high hills jutted out seaward to form the western side of the entrance, the two highest peaks capped by small castles, with several batteries built into natural platforms at various levels on the lower slopes.

On his left, more high hills thrust even farther out to sea to make the eastern side of the harbour, with several more batteries built into them and a fort almost at sea level covering the entrance.

An old Spanish fisherman in threadbare clothes, toothless, tanned and wizened as a walnut, sat on the ground with his back to the great wall, mending a net, and he nodded amiably at Ramage who realized he could be as useful as a harbour chart. Ramage nodded back and then looked at the Spanish Fleet at anchor: so many masts that the harbour looked like a forest of bare trees, so many hulls they overlapped each other.

Carefully he counted them… Twenty-seven sail of the line, and twelve frigates. But there had been thirty-two sail of the line and sixteen frigates in the Fleet a few hours before they reached Cartagena, which was the last time Ramage had been able to count them. Jackson was right after all: the missing five sail of the line and four frigates must have been French. Since they’d come so far to the westward but were not here, they must have gone on through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic. Had they been intercepted? Unlikely, since there were so few British ships in the area. More important, had they found any of the British convoys from Corsica and Elba?

How long was the Spanish Fleet going to stay in port? And what a Fleet it was! Ramage knew that whatever reputation the Spanish had as fighting seamen, they built splendid warships. There was talk than many of them had been designed by a renegade Irishman named Mullins, but whatever the truth of that, the Fleet at anchor was one of the finest afloat. And the great ship of the Fleet – the greatest in the world, in fact – was the four-decker Santísima Trinidad, the flagship, and conspicuous because of her red hull with its white strakes as much as for her sheer size. She carried 130 guns – some people said 136 – compared with the 112 guns of each of the six three-deckers anchored near her.

Ramage knew that until the end of his days he would carry in his memory the sight of those ships, and even now he felt a spasm of fear when he thought what they could do. What could England match with them? Her Navy was scattered half-way round the world – blockading the French Fleet in Brest, protecting the Tagus against any Spanish attacks on the Portuguese, guarding the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope for the Honourable East India Company ships, watching over the West Indies from the Windward and Leeward Island stations, and Jamaica and covering dozens of convoys… And here, anchored in one harbour, were one 130-gun ship, six of 122 guns, two of eighty, and eighteen seventy-fours.

Several of the big ships and some of the frigates were showing the effect of their recent cruise: many had yards sent down on deck while others were lowering them into the sea, indicating they were sufficiently badly damaged to need towing to the dockyard for repairs. And he suddenly realized neither the Kathleen nor her captor was in the harbour yet.

He turned to greet the old fisherman who put down his net and the long wooden needle and, apparently noting his accent, asked: ‘Are you French?’

‘No, American. I came in yesterday with the Fleet. You have a fine harbour here.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘You can get in with most winds. Just watch out for Santa Anna, that’s all!’

‘Santa Anna?’ inquired Ramage.

‘Over there,’ the old man said, pointing to the eastern ridge of high hills and cliffs jutting seaward to their left. ‘You see the guns at this end – that’s the San Leandro battery and then farther along another, the Santa Florentina battery. Then the fort low down on the small point you see it? That’s Fort Santa Anna on Point Santa Anna. Just off the point is Santa Anna Rock – very dangerous. You can’t see it now because the flagship is in the way. Beyond that is Trinca Botijas Point with another battery on it. Those guns! Bad for fishing, you understand? The noise drives away the fish. They swear it doesn’t, but why aren’t there any fish after they fire them for practice? You tell me why not, if it isn’t the noise.’

‘It’s the noise all right,’ said Ramage hastily. ‘But do they fire them often?’

‘No,’ said the fisherman, ‘mercifully not. Did you ever hear of a Government spending money? No! Collect it yes. Taxes, taxes, taxes. But spend it on powder and shot? No! And it’s poor powder, too. Why, when the Santa Florentina battery last fired you know what happened? It was laughable. All ten guns should have gone off at once, but bang! Only one gun fired. When they drew the shot and powder from the other nine they found it was bad powder. Damp and poor quality. Good thing, otherwise we fishermen would starve.’

‘Bad powder means good fishing, that’s certain,’ agreed Ramage. ‘What about over here–’ he gestured to the hills on the right. ‘Any rocks to worry about there?’

‘No, not one. But these nearest hills,’ he gestured to the right, towards the two small sugar-loaf hills with a steep one behind (Ramage guessed it was more than six hundred feet to the castle on the top), ‘they make the wind fluky when it’s from the north-west. I’ve seen many a three-decker get caught a’back there and almost go on to Santa Anna before they could brace round.

‘Then they built that big castle on top, too: that makes the wind even crazier. Castillo de Galeras they call it, but I can think of a better name. And that battery below there, almost on the beach. You know what they call it? Apostolado Battery. It’s blasphemy, no less: no Apostle would harm a fisherman – think of St Peter. But those damnable guns…

‘And you see the big hill beyond, at the entrance? That’s Punta de Navidad, and you can guess – another battery of guns. The blasphemous pigs,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve told the priest many times that it’s sacrilege to call batteries after saints and holy things when all the guns do is drive away the fish and leave honest folk like me to starve after a day hauling nets.’

Ramage nodded sympathetically as he looked at some of the small coastal craft alongside the quay unloading their cargoes. The nearest one, La Providencia, was a zebec, a fine example of one of the most beautiful vessels in the world, and, for her size, one of the fastest.

She had the narrow, sleek hull of a Venetian galley but more beam, and her long graceful stern and slender bowsprit was emphasized by comparison with the clumsy, applecheek bows of the ships of war near by. Her stern sloped aft in a gentle curve, narrowing all the time, so it overhung the water by several feet. But to an eye unused to Mediterranean craft, the most striking feature was her rig: she had three masts and lateen sails. Although the mainmast was vertical, the foremast raked forward and the mizzen aft. Each mast had a long, thin yard slung fore and aft from it, hanging diagonally with the fore end down at deck level and curving gently from its own weight. The triangular sails were furled at the moment, and all Ramage could see confirmed its reputation of being one of the simplest and most efficient rigs afloat.

La Providencia was the only vessel alongside the quay that was not unloading cargo. She had ports cut into her bulwarks on either side to take her guns, and abaft each of them was a much smaller oar port, so that in a calm she could be rowed. La Providencia, Ramage guessed, was probably a privateer at the present moment: she had new sails and her rigging looked new. And her paintwork was too elaborate for a vessel constantly loading and unloading cargo.

He nodded farewell to the old man and strolled along the quay for a closer look. Yes – through the ports he could see that the ropes of the breechings and tackles of the guns were all new. Obviously the owners had decided that now Spain had entered the war there was more money to be made from privateering (since the British merchantmen from the Levant had to pass only a few miles south of Cartagena to get through the Gut – as the Strait of Gibraltar was known to generations of sailors) than from carrying cargo. And they were right.

There was only one man on deck, and Ramage sat down on a nearby bollard and mopped his brow as if hot and in no hurry to go anywhere. Slowly and carefully he examined the zebec, familiarizing himself with the position of every sheet, halyard and brace. He’d seen zebecs tacking into harbour enough times to know how the great lateen sails were handled, and as soon as he returned to the inn he would make some sketches, and he’d also send the men down to walk along the quay and study the ship.

While Ramage had been inspecting the harbour and the zebec La Providencia, Jackson had found the American Consul’s office and made an appointment for the four possessors of Protections to see him at four o’clock that afternoon. The booming of the cathedral clock was just filling the whole port when Jackson led them to the Consulate building just inside the main gate in the Plaza del Rey.