Ramage's Prize (26 page)

“Why not wait a day or two?” Yorke asked. “After all, you said yourself the chances of this packet being recaptured increase every day.”

“I'm not a gambler,” Ramage said. “Not unless I have to be. And if Kerguelen meets a British frigate he'll try to make a bolt for it. Firing those stern-chasers might be fatal—for all of us.”

“Yes, you're right,” Yorke conceded. “The sooner he puts his helm down—gently!—the better.”

“We'll ask to see him when they bring breakfast,” Ramage said.

Kerguelen sat down on the bunk as though paying a social call and ran a hand almost apologetically over the stubble on his face. “You gentlemen are so freshly shaven … You asked to see me.”

“We have a business proposal to make,” Ramage said bluntly.

“So?” Kerguelen's eyebrows lifted, and he smiled ironically as he glanced round the cabin. “Banking … shipping … armaments … ?”

“Shipping,” Ramage said.

“It's an interesting business. Banking is dull, and armaments so noisy. What is the proposal?”

Ramage picked up one of the chessmen left on the board and tapped the table with it. “I'm gambling on this voyage, and so are you. I'm betting the
Arabella
will be recaptured before we reach St Malo; you're wagering you'll be able to dodge any British ships. What do you reckon the odds are?”

“Even,” Kerguelen said promptly. “Perhaps slightly in your favour.”

“But neither of us wants to lose.”

Kerguelen shrugged his shoulders. “But one of us has to!”

“No,” Ramage said. “That's why we asked to see you.”

“A moment,” Kerguelen said warily, glancing at the door. “If you have any trick in mind, I warn you …”

Ramage shook his head. “No tricks, I promise you. Our proposal is this: instead of taking the
Arabella
to France from Lisbon and selling her in St Malo for whatever you can get, will you sell her to us in Lisbon for an agreed price?”

Kerguelen's jaw dropped. “Do you have money with you?”

The Britons burst out laughing, and Kerguelen said sheepishly, “Well, how do you pay if you have no money?”

The Frenchman was showing interest; Ramage was sure of that. French money was not a popular currency these days—particularly with privateers trying to use it to buy timber and rope from Baltic or Portuguese merchants.

“You're already bound for a neutral port,” Ramage said. “If we can't raise the money in Lisbon we can have it sent out from London.”

“Oh no! You aren't going to be allowed on shore: it would be too easy for you to escape.”

“We would give our parole,” Ramage said stiffly. “Anyway, only one of us need go on shore for a couple of hours to arrange it. You keep us on board until you get the money, then you hand the ship over to us.”

Kerguelen frowned and Ramage realized that he was still looking for the trap. He hoped Much would remember his instructions.

“What sort of price had you in mind?” the Frenchman asked.

“What price would you get in St Malo?”

“You can't expect me to show the cards in
my
hand,” the Frenchman said. “You make an offer.”

Ramage hated bargaining: having no experience of business, it embarrassed him. He glanced helplessly at Yorke.

“We offer £2,500 for the ship and our freedom, paid to you in cash at Lisbon.”

Kerguelen made a mental calculation and then shook his head.

“I'm sorry, because the idea appeals to me, but I can get a lot more in St Malo; enough to make me take a chance with your cruisers.”

Yorke said, “Don't make any mistake,
M'sieur:
the money comes out of our own pockets.”

“Have you no influence?”

“It takes more than influence to prise money out of a government!”

Kerguelen nodded, but Ramage thought the Frenchman feared a trap and was going to turn down the proposal. The moment had come to show his hand.

“Before you refuse our offer, go and inspect the transom of this vessel. It won't take long: you can poke around with a knife or punch with your fist.”

“What are you saying?” Kerguelen demanded as Ramage glanced at the mate.

“He's saying,” Much interrupted suddenly, “that you'll be lucky to make Lisbon, let alone St Malo, before the stern drops off. It's all rotten. And don't risk firing one o' the stern-chasers, either!”

“Parbleu!”
Kerguelen exclaimed and hurriedly left the cabin. The door shut and once again the key turned in the lock.

“We may get a bargain yet,” Yorke said. “I think we've set the right price, and Much's bombshell about the rot was perfectly timed.”

“I'd even settle for St Malo if someone'd give me a guarantee we'd get there,” Much muttered, “what with the rot and these cut-throats.”

They had to wait for more than half an hour before Kerguelen returned, looking worried and nervous. He sat down on the bunk again, his fingers drumming on his knees. “It's bad. This man wasn't exaggerating.”

“Wish I had been,” Much said.

“But why did you sail from Kingston? She's not safe. And why are you offering to buy a rotten ship?” asked Kerguelen.

“Our offer isn't for the ship alone: we want our freedom as well,” Ramage said.

“There's no precedent,” Kerguelen said, half to himself. “But it's like a ransom.”

“Exactly like a ransom,” Ramage said, and wondered what argument he could use to tip the scales. “But when you get two beautiful women and two men who want to marry”—he gestured at Yorke and himself—”they get a little desperate …”

Kerguelen looked at Ramage, “You are going to get married?”

Ramage nodded. It was at worst only a white lie; he'd marry Gianna one day if she accepted him, and Kerguelen was not asking when.

“You poor fellows!” Kerguelen said bitterly. “My wife decided I was away too long at sea.” It was said with so much hatred there was no need to wonder whether she had found solace in another man's arms.

“Our proposition?” Ramage prompted.

“I'll do it for £3,000.”

Yorke said, “We don't have it.” Ramage glanced up in alarm.

“Your families will raise it.”

“They certainly won't! They can't. Each of us has put up all he has—including the Surgeon here.”

Kerguelen looked at each man in turn. Each of them thought of the rotten wood in the transom, and they held his eyes.

“All right, I'll do it for £2,500 and the
agent
will agree. I talked with him. He's grateful to you, Mr Bowen, for your treatment,” Kerguelen said. “But I need the parole of each of you.”

“You shall have it. In writing.”

“How long will it take to arrange, once we get to Lisbon?”

“A month at the most. Time for a packet to reach England, and another to get to Lisbon with a reply and the money.”

“Supposing the money does not come?”

“It will, but even if it didn't, you'll have waited a month,” Ramage reminded him, “and by then the Channel Fleet will have returned to Plymouth …”

“Lost a month,” Kerguelen said.

“You'd wait a month to make sure the Channel Fleet's in harbour again. But if the money didn't come we'd lose—how long? A year? Three years? Five? Would you like to be a prisoner that long?”

Kerguelen reflected a minute or two. He saw that once the
Arabella
arrived safely in Lisbon he had nothing to lose and everything to gain, while the odds were against the Englishmen.

“Very well,” he said, and held out his hand to Ramage, who shook it, and was followed by the other three men. Kerguelen said, “If you give your parole that you won't try and interfere with the running of the ship, three of you can be on deck at any one time.”

Ramage agreed at once: there was no chance of them retaking the ship—so far they had been exercised three at a time and covered by a dozen muskets—and nothing was to be gained by refusing. Also Kerguelen was probably trying them out; applying a little test to see if the British were acting in good faith.

T
HE
Lady Arabella
made her landfall at Figueira da Foz, where the River Mondego flows into the sea just south of Cape Mondego and some eighty miles north of Lisbon. For an hour as they approached the coast Ramage listened to a spasmodic argument between Kerguelen and his second-in-command, who swore he recognized the Burling Islands, a group of small islets half a dozen miles from the next headland south.

Finally, he asked Kerguelen for the use of the telescope. There was no mistaking the Cape, although its rugged rocks gave the impression of separate islets because of the high mountains behind it. But southward towards Lisbon the land was flatter, the coast lined by sand dunes backed with pine forests and dozens of little white windmills, many with the canvas of their blades reefed against the strong west wind.

“Cabo Mondego,” he told Kerguelen as he gave back the telescope.

“You're sure? All these damned headlands look alike along this coast!”

Ramage nodded. “They do, but I remember Mondego: coming down from the north it's easy to mistake it for the Burling Islands.”

With that Kerguelen snapped out a stream of orders that brought the brig round to the south, steering parallel with the coast but out of sight from anyone but sharp-eyed lookouts on the headlands.

Soon after noon the packet was reaching down towards Os Farilhões, a group of islets ten miles north-west of Cabo Carvoeiro and which, because many of them were jutting triangles of rocks, looked as if a fleet of small vessels were sailing among them. Closer inshore was Burling Island, flat-topped and over three hundred feet high, its sides precipitous cliffs which shot spray high into the air as the Atlantic swell hit them.

As he walked the deck with Yorke, Southwick and Wilson, Ramage saw several ships making their way north and south inshore of Burling Island, but they were coasting vessels, probably carrying local cargoes between Lisbon and the places to the north, like Porto, at the mouth of the Douro.

Southwick gestured towards Os Farilhões and Burling Island, the scattering of rocks between them now showing clearly. “They're no trouble in this sort of weather, but beating up here with a north-west gale and heavy rain …” He shuddered at the memory of the times he had done it. “I don't like to think of how many ships have hit one of them in a blinding squall with only a moment's warning.”

As night fell, with no British ship of war having been sighted, Kerguelen had the
Arabella
jogging along under reefed topsail, ensuring they did not arrive off Cabo da Roca, just north of the wide entrance of the River Tagus, until after dawn. It was half an hour after sunrise when Ramage came up on deck to find the packet three miles off the great cape, the westernmost point of the continent of Europe. More than five hundred feet high, the cape was a series of almost precipitous layers of rock, and inland it merged into the Serra de Sintra, a range of spiky mountains. For the time being the peaks were hidden by thin layers of cloud which clung to them as though each wore a white wig. Ramage remembered the palace built on the summit of one of them, Castelo da Pena, and shivered at the thought of how cold it would be: he was still used to the Tropics …

An hour later the
Arabella
rounded Cabo Raso—which, with Cabo Espichel 21 miles south, were guardians of the great bay into which the Tagus flowed—and was soon passing the Santa Marta Fort perched on the headland sheltering the fishing villages of Cascais and Estoril.

“You know the entrance to Lisbon, then?” Kerguelen asked suddenly. When Ramage nodded, the Frenchman said, “I've not been here before, and we have no charts …”

“I know it well enough,” Ramage said, and pointed. “You can see Forte de São Julião on the north side, and that's Bico da Calha on the southern side. It's three miles across, but the channel is only a mile wide and goes close to the Fort.”

He moved to the starboard side to get a clearer view. “Now, you see that long yellow bank of sand in the middle there, with breakers on it?” Quickly he described the entrance channel, pointed out several forts lining the entrance of the estuary, and ended up with a warning: “The tidal stream reaches four knots out there—more if there's been much rain in the mountains, because the Tagus starts five hundred miles inland—and sets right across the shoals. So if you lose the wind in the channel you'll have to anchor in a hurry.”

With a steady west wind the
Arabella
crossed the bar, ran in past Forte de São Julião and, as she hugged the north shore, Ramage saw the curious Torre de Belém guarding the approach to Lisbon itself and pointed it out to Kerguelen.

The Frenchman sniffed. “Looks as if a Portuguese designed the main part and let an Indian add the ornamentation.”