Ramage and the Freebooters (30 page)

He decided to rule out the east coasts of the island, where the bays and lagoons took the full force of the Atlantic swell, because no privateers would dare use them: too many coral reefs, and the entrances too narrow to beat out in the prevailing easterly winds to snatch their next prize.

So the hiding places had to be on the south, north or (most probably) western side of an island. The bay he was looking for would be almost completely enclosed – for concealment. There’d probably be deep water close up to the shore – for unloading the schooners. And not too far from a larger port – for carrying the stolen cargoes overland.

The major factor was concealment. A concealed bay, or a bay in which a schooner and a privateer could hide without being seen from to seaward or being too obvious from the land. After half an hour’s search of the charts he knew there was only one way of finding the likely ones – he’d have to go up the islands in the
Triton
and look. He hadn’t yet paid a courtesy call on the Governor, but that would have to wait. He shouted to the sentry to pass the word for the Master.

As the
Triton
sailed back from Martinique, passing southwards along the west side of Grenada, Ramage stood on the larboard side looking at the mountains covering the island and reviewing the voyage. He admitted with ill grace that he was still no wiser than before.

Plenty of wide, open bays, almost enclosed bays, big bays and small bays; but none holding a privateer. Working north from Grenada, there’d been the small rocky islets just north of the island – among them the pointed Kick ’em Jenny, as aptly named a place as he’d ever come across, since the Trade winds and current flowing into the Caribbean knocked up a vicious, confused sea round it; then the large, narrow island of Carriacou, a thousand or so people living on it, and a couple of uninhabited and desolate islets just east of it.

Both islets had bays on the leeward side which could be used as anchorages – indeed were by small open fishing boats. They were picturesque; the water startlingly clear; but not only was there no sign of a privateer but the local fishermen swore they’d never seen any and Maxton, who’d done the questioning, was satisfied they’d been telling the truth.

Then the
Triton
had visited the larger Union Island to the north of Carriacou, with Chatham Bay on the lee side and several small islets on the other three sides. Again plenty of possible anchorages but all much too open for secrecy. Then Mayero and the Tobago Cays with more islets to the north, and Cannouan, larger and mountainous but hopeless for unloading schooners because of the swell.

On then to Bequia, more hilly than mountainous, with strong currents and a large open anchorage. Admiralty Bay, and a thriving whaling industry run mostly by Scotsmen.

They were curious men and Ramage wanted to know more about them. From what he could gather they were descendants of former Scots taken prisoner in the fighting against Cromwell’s Ironsides during the Civil War of 1648. And Cromwell had shown no mercy: these men who’d fought unsuccessfully for Prince Charles had been shipped out to the West Indies and treated like slaves. Now most of their descendants, skin burned red by the sun, many with red hair, made a living as fishermen or working on the plantations.

They had their women with them – also descendants of the women who’d elected to be transported with their menfolk – and although treated like the native slaves, refused to have anything to do with the coloured people, behaving with a pride which should have shamed many of the white plantation-owners who employed them. Already there were signs of too much inbreeding.

But whatever the rights and wrongs of their being transported to the West Indies, Ramage believed their assurances that privateers never visited Admiralty Bay.

St Vincent, a few miles across the channel to the north, was very large – much bigger than Grenada, with the port and capital of Kingstown in the south-west corner. Mountainous, fertile, a great green mass of sloping hills, terraces and forests, it had plenty of bays – among them Wallilabu, Cumberland, Château Belaire (with a small harbour) – but nothing that hid a privateer.

So far Ramage had not felt disappointed: he was sure he would find the answer in St Lucia, the last big island before Martinique. From the north end of St Vincent there was a clear view of St Lucia twenty-four miles to the north. More mountainous than St Vincent, the island seemed to attract all the rain in the Caribbean (though he remembered the prize usually went to Dominica, way to the north). At the south end, like two enormous thumbs sticking up in the air, were the cone-shaped twin mountains of the Pitons. And all along the west coast up to the capital, Castries, and beyond, were many bays.

Even before leaving Grenada Ramage had half hoped he’d spotted on the St Lucia chart the place the privateers were using – Marigot Bay. Shaped like the glass stopper of a decanter, the bay’s entrance was a 200-yard-wide gap in the cuffs and it ran inland for 600 yards before a low sandspit on either side narrowed the channel to less than fifty yards.

Beyond the sandspits the bay suddenly opened out again into a circular lagoon.

Less than ten miles south of the port of Castries and completely surrounded by high hills, it had seemed an ideal spot, and as the
Triton
approached, Ramage had ordered Southwick to beat to quarters.

There was a natural platform in the otherwise sheer cliff on the south side of the entrance – a couple of guns mounted there could prevent anything approaching the entrance, and although the north side was not so sheer there were several positions where guns could be hidden.

But the
Triton
had gone right up to the entrance and hove-to, every gun of the starboard broadside aimed at the southern platform, while both he and Southwick had looked carefully, first for signs of guns, then through the entrance and across the first bay at the two sandspits which almost sealed it off from the lagoon beyond.

But the spits were low, covered with palms, and there had been no signs of a ship’s masts in the lagoon. Some of the palms on the northern spit were withering, the fronds turning brown in the hot sun. Perhaps the river flowing into the lagoon had recently flooded, washing away the earth and sand from round the roots; or maybe some animal had eaten away the bark. It wasn’t often one saw a dead palm tree – they seemed to live forever.

So Marigot Bay wasn’t the privateersmen’s nest; and as he’d ordered the yards to be braced round to get the
Triton
under way to call in at the island’s capital, Castries, and then check the north side of the island before going on to Martinique, he knew why the two frigates had failed.

There’d been no clues in Castries or in Fort Royal at Martinique. Talks with the governors of both islands – and schooner-owners and captains – yielded plenty of criticisms of the Royal Navy, but no ideas; indeed, all of them talked of the privateers as if they were evil spirits manifesting themselves out of the misty rain forest in the darkness of a tropical night. And in an atmosphere thick with voodoo, superstition, witch doctors and ignorance, it wasn’t surprising.

Southwick had been unusually silent for the past hour as the
Triton
sailed down the last few miles back to St George.

Away over the starboard bow the headland of Point Saline was just coming up over the horizon, but only the caps of the smoothly rounded hills forming the peninsula were visible so that it seemed like a sea monster wriggling along in the water.

Southwick pulled his hat forward to shield his eyes.

’Twas a waste of time, that trip.’

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. ‘The only way to be sure was to look for ourselves. And now we all know what the islands look like.’

‘That Marigot Bay… I was sure we’d find them there.’

Southwick pronounced the ‘t’ and Ramage just checked himself from correcting him yet again. Instead he nodded. ‘I’d have bet on it.’

‘Marigot, or the privateers coming down from north of Martinique.’

That was Southwick’s particular pet idea; that the privateers were based north of Martinique and sailed down past Fort Royal, captured the schooners and took them back somewhere to the north: some isolated lair in Dominica, Guadeloupe or the dozen or so smaller islands up towards Antigua. But the authorities in Martinique had ruled it out: their only contribution to the scant information available was that there were enough fishing boats working out to leeward of Fort Royal both by day and night to be sure no privateers passed.

‘What now, sir?’

Again Ramage shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s only prayer left,’ he said sourly.

At that moment Southwick saw him stiffen, as if stabbed in the back. He began rubbing the scar on his brow, swung round and walked aft to the taffrail. The Master watched closely, having made no secret that he was worried about the Admiral’s orders: it was obvious to him – though Mr Ramage made light of it – that the Admiral had chosen the
Triton’s
captain as the scapegoat. And, Southwick brooded to himself, the Ramage family have already suffered enough from the time the government of the day used the old Earl as their scapegoat.

Southwick had lived too many years to expect justice or fair play; he’d long ago asked only that the injustices and unfairness in Service and political life should be kept within reasonable bounds. Yet to be fair to the Admiral, the two frigate captains who’d already failed to find the privateers were probably men he’d had with him since they were lieutenants: he owed them some loyalty.

When faced with an apparently impossible task maybe it was only natural to shield them by passing it on to someone to whom he owed no loyalty – Mr Ramage. Although it was bad luck for Mr Ramage, the fact was he had been lucky recently inasmuch as he’d gained a loyal ally in Commodore Nelson who, judging from his performance so far, would go a long way in the Service – if he didn’t fall foul of the Admiralty through not obeying the exact wording of some order or another.

At that moment Ramage came back to Southwick. The expression on his face was an odd mixture of anger, embarrassment and happy surprise: like a child who’d been given an unjustified beating one moment and an unexpected present the next.

‘I’m beginning to think we’re tackling this from the wrong end,’ he said quietly.

‘How so, sir?’

‘Well, we’ve been trying to find the privateers’ base. But since there’s never any sign of them at sea, obviously they don’t patrol looking for schooners…’

Southwick looked puzzled. ‘Then how do they find ’em?’

‘They must know exactly when and where to look.’

‘I don’t follow you, sir.’

‘Oh, wake up, Southwick: they must get secret information. If they don’t go and search, then they must know that a schooner will pass a certain headland at a certain time, so they can be there to meet her in the dark. Minimum distance to sail, and a certain interception: that’s why no one’s ever seen them.’

‘By Jove!’ Southwick exclaimed. ‘That
is
the only answer! And it means there’s a spy at work in Grenada! But’ – he paused, forehead wrinkled, nose twitching like a rabbit’s – ‘but they sail from Grenada in darkness: it’s 160 miles to Martinique and 115 miles to St Lucia. How the devil can a spy get the information to ’em quickly enough? Why – beggin’ your pardon, sir – it’s almost impossible.’

‘But it happens, Southwick; obviously it happens. I’m dam’ sure that’s how they do it. And because the privateers guess we’d think it’s impossible, they succeed. Surprise, Mr Southwick: do the unexpected and you’ll nearly always win, whatever the odds.’

Southwick had heard that often enough from his captain, and seen him put it into practice. ‘Was that why you left the master’s mate and some men at Carriacou – so they might spot how the news is passed?’

Yet again Ramage shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes and no – I’d a feeling we could do with some eyes we could trust keeping a watch from somewhere along the route, and Appleby can get down to us in a local cutter in five or six hours…’

‘If he can keep his men sober.’

‘I warned them what’d happen if they so much as touched a drop of liquor…’

‘Aye, but whatever you threaten seamen think it’s worth it.’

‘Well, Appleby’ll stay sober; and he has enough guineas in his pocket to hire the cutter’s crew as well.’

Sir Jason Fisher, the Governor of Grenada, represented a new type of colonial administrator, but Ramage was far from sure he was any improvement on the old. Sir Jason came from humble origins – that much was obvious from his every action, from every sentence he spoke, from every thought he ever expressed in his whining Midland accent.

According to Colonel Wilson, who made no secret that he detested him, as a young man Sir Jason had been lucky to get a clerkship in ‘John Company’, and he’d worked hard and made the best of it. Like many a clever lad in the Honourable East India Company service, he’d received an excellent training, and he’d soon left it to begin his own business, so that twenty years in India changed him from a clever but impoverished and timid clerk into a rich nabob, able to retire to England at forty-four.

But Ramage guessed that the riches he’d acquired through trade had brought Sir Jason problems he’d never thought of when he’d started to accumulate his money. He was wealthy, yes; but he had no social position. Very rich nabobs returning to England with their fortunes could usually buy their way to an Irish peerage and then by sheer persistence (and a judicious marriage into an aristocratic but impoverished family who needed money sufficiently to overcome any distaste for wealth obtained through ‘trade’) finally become tolerated – though never accepted – by Society.

All this Sir Jason obviously had only discovered when he arrived back in England. And at the same time he’d also discovered that although he was rich, he was not rich enough. His wealth would, with some ‘interest’, buy him a seat in the Commons but the House of Lords would forever be beyond his grasp; even an Irish peerage was beyond his purse since the competition from other, richer nabobs was too great.