Ramage reached out and touched his arm reassuringly. 'Cheer up, Aitken. Listen to me for a minute or two and after that you will be perfectly free to refuse the command and stay on board the Juno.’
Aitken swallowed and tried to smile, while Southwick looked completely puzzled, as though he feared for his Captain's sanity.
'Some time this morning,' Ramage said quietly, 'the French Governor in Fort Royal, and the naval commander, will be expecting to see La Créole and La Mutine sailing into Fort Royal Bay, escorting the Juno with a Tricolour flying above the Red Ensign ...'
He paused for a moment to make sure both men pictured the scene.
'On a Sunday morning everyone will be out in the streets cheering and I wouldn't be surprised if the guns of Fort St Louis began firing a feu de joie. The schooners will sail up to the anchorage, tack and wear round the Surcouf frigate a couple of times to show off. The French prize crew will bring the Juno in and prepare to anchor her close to the Surcouf. Just imagine the scene with everyone cheering and yelling, the crews of the schooners lining the bulwarks and waving, and the French prize crews on board the rosbif frigate Juno manning the rigging, singing revolutionary songs, no doubt.'
'But, but sir,' Aitken stammered. 'The French haven't captured the Juno!'
'No, indeed they have not,' Ramage said quietly, 'but the Governor of Fort Royal doesn't know that yet.'
CHAPTER TEN
The sky was cloudless, an unbelievable, almost gaudy blue, and the hills and mountains forming a wide bowl round Fort Royal Bay were a fresh green from the night's rain squalls. To the north Ramage could see the truncated top of Mount Pelée, and for once it was clear of its usual cap of cloud. The wind was brisk from the east and the sunlight sparkled from the wavelets. It was, he thought, a good morning to be alive; a piece of good fortune emphasized by the fact that an hour earlier he had attended a funeral service for forty-seven Frenchmen and conducted it for nine Junos.
Each of the fifty-six bodies had been put one by one on the hinged plank at the bulwark just above where the standing part of the foresheet was made fast to the ship's side, and the appropriate flag placed over it. Fifty-six times the plank had been tilted, the flag held, and the body in its shotted hammock slid over the side into the water. He had conducted the service for the Junos and he had asked the lieutenant who had commanded La Créole to carry it out for the Frenchmen; surely one of the few funeral services conducted by a man guarded by armed Marines.
As the Juno stretched close hauled across the mouth of Fort Royal Bay heading for the anchorage off the city, Ramage knew he was really gambling. By comparison last night's capture of the schooners had been a matter of calculation, and he had calculated correctly. Now he needed a gambler's luck, if there was such a thing, because what he was going to attempt was beyond calculation. Like some pallid gambler at Buck's, he could only roll the three dice (in this case the Juno, La Mutine and La Créole) and hope for the best, knowing that the croupier would rake in men's lives if he lost. His life and the Junos' were at stake.
He glanced aloft to where the Tricolour streamed to leeward, a third again as large as the Red Ensign beneath it. Every available telescope in Fort Royal would be watching it. Over to starboard Aitken was keeping La Créole well up to windward, while to larboard Baker was making a good job handling La Mutine, Wagstaffe had been disappointed to find that he was not going to get command after all until Ramage had told him his task.
The Junos were exhausted. First they had to transfer all the French wounded to La Mutine, where Bowen was still on board, with his instruments and assistants, attending to them. Once the wounded had been made as comfortable as possible in La Mutine, the French prisoners were transferred to her as well and secured in the hold, with Marine guards covering them. There was little likelihood of them trying to escape, for Ramage had explained carefully to the French lieutenant that he intended sending them all into Fort Royal under a flag of truce, providing the lieutenant gave his word that the total number of men would be entered on the exchange list, and none would ever serve against the British until the equivalent number of British prisoners in French hands had been duly exchanged. The Frenchman had readily agreed - it was a common enough practice - and drawn up a list of the names of the wounded and prisoners and signed it.
Whether or not the French at Fort Royal would honour La Mutine's flag of truce when they saw what the Juno and Créole were doing was a different matter, but Baker had his orders. If necessary he could free the lieutenant on parole and send him on shore in the schooner's boat to explain matters.
One thing that particularly worried Ramage was the thick anchor cable draped along the Juno's starboard side. To a sharp-eyed watcher on the shore it would seem strange, but with luck no one would guess its purpose. That damned cable, a rope ten inches in circumference, was the main reason why the Junos were exhausted: Wagstaffe had worked them hard, fighting the clock. The cable was made fast round the frigate's mizen mast, then 300 feet of it was carefully flaked down across the quarterdeck, leading out through the starboard sternchase port, round the edge of the transom, and then forward along the ship's side to the bow, where the end was made fast with light line that a slash of a cutlass would cut. Thin line secured it every few feet along the ship's side, to prevent it hanging down in a great bight, but that line was merely seizing, and a good tug would break it.
He stood at the quarterdeck rail and looked around the maindeck of a ship which, as the great Tricolour told everyone in Fort Royal, was a French prize captured during the night in the Devil knew what desperate encounter with the two schooners now escorting her back in triumph, their prize crew on board handling her, as Ramage had carefully explained to Wagstaffe and the quartermaster, with somewhat less skill than she had been handled when she had tacked into the bay a few days earlier. It would be too much to expect a short-handed French crew - the schooners had carried only a total of eighty seamen - to be too expert.
He looked at the Juno's guns run out along the maindeck. Every 12-pounder was loaded with case shot so that when fired it would discharge forty-two iron balls, each weighing four ounces. A single broadside of thirteen guns would sweep the enemy with 546 shot, with another 120 weighing two ounces each from the three 6-pounders. Four-ounce and two-ounce shot was too light to inflict much damage on a ship, but sufficiently numerous and heavy to cut down men in swathes.
The guns were ready. The locks were fitted and the spark of the flints had been checked; the trigger lines were neatly coiled on top of the breech and tubs of water for the sponges stood between each pair of guns with match tubs nearby. The ship's boys squatted along the centreline, sitting on their cylindrical wooden cartridge boxes. The gunner was down in the magazine; the guns' crews were hidden against the bulwarks. At each gun port cutlasses were hung ready for all the men, while pikes were in the racks round the masts. Behind each pair of guns, well clear of the recoil, was a stand of muskets, all of them loaded. The decks were wetted and sanded but the planks were so hot that seamen had to keep wetting them afresh, using buckets and taking the water from tubs.
The skylight over Ramage's cabin had been removed and stowed below: it got in the way of the anchor cable as it led to the mizenmast. A pile of canvas stood by the stern chase port, ready for use as keekling, to prevent the cable chafing at the edges of the port when it was run out. Wagstaffe had wanted to measure the distance from the mast to the port and lash on the keekling earlier, but Ramage had watched the eastern sky lightening and had told him to leave it: there had still been much to do and very little time.