CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As the Triton sailed back from Martinique, passing southwards along the west side of Grenada, Ramage stood en the larboard side looking at the mountains covering the island and reviewing the voyage. He admitted with ill grace due 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 man 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, Chateau 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 me south end, like two enormous thumbs sticking up in the air, were the cone-shaped twin mountains of the Pitons. And all along me 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 me 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 cliffs 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 mere 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 mere 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 me 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 me 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 me 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 me 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.