Ramage And The Rebels

'Well, no, sir.' Rennick was wary. All too often the captain's questions - and - answers ended up with some conclusion he could not refute, but for the moment he failed to see the trend of the captain's argument. 'Not better disciplined, anyway.'

'And the odds our men usually reckon against the French?'

'Well, sir, three to one . . .'

'Mr Rennick,' Ramage said in the same quiet voice, 'my mathematics are not particularly good, but if we have one hundred and fifty and they have five hundred, surely the odds are close to three to one?'

Rennick seized the only argument left. They're not all French, sir.'

Ramage laughed. 'No, but don't press the point. The French are the privateersmen and will be better trained: they are used to using muskets and pistols. Your Dutchmen, the rebels, will have no training and even less discipline: they'll be the "philosophers", waving their arms in the air and talking loudly of freedom and equality while die privateersmen fire off a dozen rounds each.'

Suddenly Rennick realized that he had given the wrong impression. From the start, for a reason he could no longer fathom, he had thought in terms of defending Amsterdam, although the captain had not made a point of it He, the Marine officer, was the one who should be arguing that the Calypso's role was to fight out in the open, where they could attack suddenly and retreat, strike again from another direction and vanish, swoop on the enemy when they had bivouacked for the night and then disappear into the darkness. When you had by far the smallest force it was fatal to get trapped in a defensive position.

He glanced up to see the captain watching him and knew those brown eyes had seen and understood his thoughts. The captain's look was friendly. 'Always look all round the horizon first, Rennick; it's very easy to start walking in the wrong direction.'

'I can see that, sir - now!'

'Very well, give me your opinion on these proposals. Don't be afraid to speak out if you disagree. Now, we'll use one hundred and fifty seamen and your forty or so Marines. I think it would be a mistake to mix them: the Marines are the trained soldiers; I see them as the sword, while the seamen are the club. But that being so, aren't forty Marines a little unwieldy?'

Rennick cursed the fact that the Calypso did not have the junior Marine lieutenant to which she was entitled, although his sergeant was a reliable man. 'Yes, sir. You remember that at Santa Cruz we put half under the sergeant while I had the other half. That worked out very well.'

'But the seamen,' Ramage said, 'a group of twenty seamen aren't going to be nearly as effective as twenty Marines.'

'Companies of thirty seamen, if you want my opinion. More if you're using fewer officers.'

'There'll be five of us and you and the sergeant. Seven companies, or platoons, or whatever you care to call them. So five companies each of thirty men will take care of the seamen.'

The seamen were light - footed and would be excellent for night work, Rennick realized, providing they did not go blundering into farmyards and set the dogs barking. But none of the deck officers, including Ramage, had the slightest idea about flanking operations or - then he remembered that Captain Ramage was the first to see that Amsterdam could be outflanked from the north and was indefensible. And the first lieutenant, Aitken, came from the Highlands, and there was no telling what tricks he had picked up while hunting (or poaching) deer, when one had to attack silently to windward: deer were too sharp - nosed and sharp - eyed to allow a leeward approach. Wagstaffe came from London, so he wouldn't know the difference between a left wheel and a pink flamingo (of which the island had hundreds, he had heard). The third lieutenant came from Suffolk, so Baker might know a little fieldcraft - it was surprising what one could pick up as a boy while poaching partridges over a neighbour's fields. Kenton was the son of a half - pay captain, so he could not be trusted to walk across an open field at night without bumping into the only bull it contained. That left Captain Ramage, and at that point Rennick stopped speculating: one could never be sure what the captain knew - some of his exploits in Italy with his coxswain, that American fellow Jackson, would be unbelievable if it had not been other people telling the tales.

'Seven groups, then,' Ramage said. "They can operate as a single force or be divided up. Well spend today sorting out the seamen, and you can give them instructions in the rudiments of fieldcraft.'

Rennick tried to hide his disappointment but failed. 'We're not moving off today, sir?'

'No,' Ramage said crisply, shaking his head. 'If we move on the rebels in daylight they'll be fully prepared. They seem to camp for the night; get settled in early, no doubt, with a bottle of wine each. Maybe a dozen sentries . . . We want to achieve enough surprise to make up for the odds.'

Rennick knew his captain well enough to make criticisms now, not later. 'Night fighting on land is a very uncertain business, sir.'

'I know,' Ramage said 'soberly. 'Jackson and I once had some experience of it in Italy against cavalry. And it struck me then that the French cavalrymen could see as little as we could and because there were so many they fell over each other. Darkness puts everyone on the same level. Like death, it's the great leveller!'

The Marines, sir,' Rennick was quick to point out 'We lose the advantage of their specialized training.'

'Not their discipline, though, and they're only a quarter of our force. Darkness, Rennick, is like the invention of the gun. Until the gun came along, a skilled swordsman would be sure to kill an unskilled one, but the gun made them both equal. With a pistol, the smallest man can fight and beat a giant. We haven't invented darkness, but we can make use of it. Your Marines should be able to fire three aimed musket shots for everybody else's one.'

Rennick grinned happily as he thought about it "Well be wide awake, too, and the rebels half asleep - except for the sentries.'

They'll be half asleep and with luck half drunk, too, providing we take them by surprise. Now, we have to arrange with the Governor to keep Dutch patrols out for a few more hours, so we know exactly where the rebels are all day, and where they camp. So well make a start issuing and checking pistols and muskets, and get the grindstone up on deck to sharpen cutlasses and pikes. A boarding pike is going to be more useful in the darkness than a pistol. You might emphasize that to the men. Remember a boarding pike is seven and a half feet long - that's the closest the enemy need get to you!'

Lacey brought the schooner La Creole into the harbour exactly at noon. Ramage's arrangement with the Governor concerning the seaward lookouts at Waterfort and Riffort had worked perfectly, except that he had forgotten to tell anyone in the Calypso about it, so when Aitken heard the sound of ten evenly - spaced musket shots fired at five - second intervals coming up the channel from the entrance he had the Marine drummer beat to quarters while the word was being passed for the captain, who was in his cabin.

As Ramage came up the companionway he guessed what had happened, but the musket shots could also be a warning of an enemy ship. He explained to Aitken the arrangement he had made with the Governor, and the two men watched the British flags which were now flying from the two forts and Government House without the white flags of truce. Then they had seen La Creole tacking cautiously across the entrance, at first a good mile out, and then closer as Lacey found the batteries did not open fire.

Ramage did not envy Lacey, the situation was a good test of the young lieutenant The last time he had seen the Calypso she had been off the north - west coast of the island, which was well and truly Dutch - owned. When he returned from escorting La Perle, the Calypso was at anchor in Amsterdam, apparently undamaged and still under a British flag, while British flags flew from the forts. Yet Lacey had seen what could be done with flags.