Ramage's Signal r-11

by Dudley Pope

  He looked around the Passe Partout. The six swivels were loaded; men stood at them with linstocks round which were wound smoking slowmatch. The Frenchmen were settling themselves down in comfortable corners with their muskets, arranging powder, shot and rammers to hand.

  Chesneau, having talked to each of his men, was now waddling aft to join Ramage and Rossi right aft. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the Magpie. 'The owners of that schooner allow the captain even less paint than mine do for the Passe Partout!'

  'I don't think they've had her long', Ramage said. 'You see she has damage down the larboard side? I think that was done when they captured her from the British.'

  Chesneau shivered. 'I hope your countrymen had quick deaths; otherwise they are still chained in the galleys.'

  'You do not have the build for rowing', Ramage said, 'so perhaps we had better not be captured.'

  'I would kiss the Pope's ring and never dodge another tax to avoid that', Chesneau said, 'but our fate is only a couple of ship's lengths astern now.'

  'Yes', Ramage said, looking round at Rossi, who was watching the leech of the Passe Partout's sail, a cheerful grin on his face as Stafford shouted some teasing obscenity at him.

  'You are very calm, M'sieu Ramage; you even smile.'

  'I'm smiling because I am about to do something of which I do not entirely approve, M'sieu Chesneau.'

  'Indeed? You have left it late in life to acquire a new bad habit!'

  The Magpie was perhaps forty yards astern now and the black marks appearing in the Passe Partout's sail were being made by musket balls.

  'It may not be a bad habit; it's just one I avoid as much as possible.'

  'You intrigue me. What are you going to do, M'sieu Ramage?'

  'Gamble, M'sieu Chesneau: Les jeux sont faits!'

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Admittedly it was a bet for which he would be hard put to find a taker, whether among the bookies on Newmarket Heath or the pallid gamblers at White's or Brooks's or Boodle's. He was betting the life of the fifteen motley crew of the Passe Partout on a single chance: that the couple of hundred or so Algerines who had captured the Magpie only a few weeks ago were still bewildered; that the towering masts and running and standing rigging of a gaff-rigged topsail schooner was such a complex mass of spars and rope, to men used to simple lateen sails hoisted on stubby masts, that they were certainly unused to it and probably still nervous.

  He stood close to Rossi and gave his instructions. The tip of the Magpie's flying jibboom was less than forty yards astern; the musket balls were beginning to rattle and Jackson, having been warned by Ramage, was waiting the signal to fire his swivels into the screaming and gibbering mass of Arabs on the Magpie's bow while Orsini held back his Frenchmen.

  'This ship', Ramage said to Chesneau in a conversational tone, 'she handles easily?'

  'Like a dancer', the fat man said. He was pale now and perspiring but Ramage sensed it was due to more of a feeling of helplessness than fear.

  Thirty yards to the tip of the Magpie's jibboom, and it would be only a matter of moments before some of the Passe Partouts were hit by musket balls.

  Ramage pointed at Jackson. 'Fire, when you're ready!'

  He pointed at Orsini and repeated the order.

  The guns thundered out at twenty yards: by the time the smoke cleared it was ten yards, the great jibboom high above them.

  Then he turned to Rossi. 'Round we go!' and with that helped the Italian push the big tiller over to larboard so that the Passe Partout suddenly turned to starboard, jinking right across the Magpie's bow and missing the jibboom by only a yard or so. Chesneau, the moment he saw what they were doing, jumped over to add his weight to the leverage on the rudder and as Ramage tried to look over his shoulder at the Magpie, he saw the great schooner with its towering masts and topmasts already passing astern, at right-angles to the Passe Partout's course. As her quarterdeck raced by, the tartane's swivels were grunting again and spurting smoke, slamming 3-pounder roundshot across her decks while the unhurried firing of muskets showed that the Frenchmen were picking their targets.

  The Passe Partout's sheets were eased as Martin hurried his men to trim the sail on the new course, with the wind now broad on the larboard quarter.

  Ramage stood back from the tiller, saw the lateen sail bellying nicely, noticed that Jackson's swivel gunners were already sponging and ramming, and saw the Frenchmen hurriedly reloading their muskets as they scrambled into positions from which they could fire at the Magpie when she turned after them.

  The schooner herself, Ramage then realized, had been taken completely by surprise: not one of her broadside guns had fired as she raced across the Passe Partout's stern - yet she should have given the tartane a devastating raking broadside: that had seemed to Ramage his greatest danger when he weighed up the idea several minutes ago.

  But now the schooner was beginning to turn; already her masts were separating as she turned to starboard to wear round after the Passe Partout, but even as she turned Ramage felt something clutch at his heart, because she was a beautiful vessel.

  The wheel had obviously been put over and the great ship was turning on her heel, the big booms slamming over from the starboard side to the larboard as she began to come round after the tartane and her stern passed through the eye of the wind.

  But in their excitement the Algerines had not cast off the running backstays; the booms had swung across only a short distance before jamming hard up against them, and the ship continued turning so the wind filling the sails exerted enormous pressure on the booms and through the booms on to the running backstays.

  Ramage looked aloft. From the running backstays the pressure was, of course, spreading to the masts, to which the stays were secured, and he could now see that her rigging was slack - or, rather, the result of months of scorching sun drying and stretching it and rain shrinking it. The Algerines, he was sure, had not set up the rigging from the day they captured her.

  The fools had gybed her all standing, the fear of all seamen in fore-and-aft rigged vessels, and suddenly the ship seemed to vanish. One moment the sails were there, great billowing masses of canvas distorted by the hard lines of the ropes into which they were being pressed, and the next moment they had disappeared. Instead there was a long, low hulk wallowing in the water, covered with canvas like a shroud, which was rapidly darkening as water soaked into it.

  Ramage was puzzled as to why he had been so surprised, because the Magpie had done just what he had hoped: that was why he had taken the Passe Partout across her bow. He hoped that the Algerines, unused to the Magpie's complex rig, would have become so excited in their chase of the tartane that when the Passe Partout suddenly jinked across her bow like a hare being chased by hounds they would spin the wheel over and forget to let go the running backstays on one side and take them up on the other.

  'Accidente!' Rossi said, 'the Algerine could do with you as their admiral, sir, just to teach them how to sail our ships!'

  Chesneau simply shook him by the hand. 'We are your prisoners again, m'sieu. Our freedom was brief - thanks to you.'

  Ramage grinned, and then noticed that they were rapidly drawing away from the dismasted Magpie.

  'Perhaps your men would be kind enough to lower the sail: it will take my men another five miles' sailing to find out how it is done!'

  Chesneau barked out orders and the Frenchmen, putting down their muskets and pistols and grinning cheerfully, hurried to the halyard and vangs.

  Ramage caught Jackson's eye and pointed to the muskets, and within a minute Baxter and Johnson were collecting up the small arms and taking them aft to the little cabin.

  Lying stopped half a mile to leeward of the Magpie, the Passe Partout looked as innocent as a vessel waiting in a calm and giving her men an hour or two to try their luck with fishhooks.

  Ramage and Martin watched the hulk of the Magpie. It was, Martin commented, hard to see the wreck for the Algerines: the ship looked more like a floatin
g log covered with busy ants. Already they had cut away the sails to clear the after part of the ship, and now they were chopping at the shrouds holding the broken masts alongside the ship.

  'They're in a panic', Ramage said, 'and either they do not have an effective captain or he was killed.'

  'Certainly Jackson's swivels were quite effective - he found a few bags of musket balls and used them instead of roundshot.'

  Ramage turned to Martin in surprise. 'That was smart of him. Where were they?'

  'Actually the French master mentioned them to Orsini: he thought they'd be more useful than roundshot. Jackson managed to get twenty-five into each swivel.'

  'One hundred and fifty musket balls in every broadside! Did he...'

  'Yes, sir: as the Magpie went across our stern, they managed to fire each swivel at her quarterdeck.'

  That was typically Jackson: he did not bother his captain with the question of whether or not to substitute musket balls for roundshot because he knew the answer and just went ahead and did it. And as a result it was unlikely that a man had been left alive abaft the Magpie's mainmast.

  'There go the remains of her mainmast and the topmast', Martin commented.

  'And the mainboom and gaff, Ramage said as he watched the spars float away.

  'Now they're chopping like madmen to get the foremast clear.'

  'Yes', Ramage said cheerfully, 'and very soon someone over there is going to realize they have nothing left with which to jury-rig her.'

  Martin gave a boyish chuckle. The mainboom could have been hoisted on shears and used as a jury mainmast, and the gaff could have made an emergency foremast. 'They must have spare sails stowed below, but I can see the deck's swept clean - yes, look over there, sir', he said pointing to the east. 'All that floating wreckage must be her smashed boats and the spare booms stowed alongside them.'

  'Well, they've a long row ahead of them', Ramage said sourly, and Martin stared at him.

  "We don't ...?'

  Ramage shook his head. 'Here, take the glass and give me an estimate of how many men you think there are still alive on board.'

  Martin balanced himself, adjusted the focus of the glass and began counting in fives and had reached a hundred in less than half a minute. The next hundred took longer, and after two hundred and fifty he was counting in pairs.

  Finally he gave the glass back to Ramage. 'Three hundred and seventy at least. Round the wheel the bodies are almost piled up.'

  'And the actual complement of the Calypso?' Ramage asked, to ram the point home.

  'Two hundred and twenty.'

  'And we have forty French prisoners from the semaphore station.'

  'I see what you mean, sir.'

  'No, you are just doing sums, 220 of us against 370 Algerines and forty-eight French. You don't realize that every one of those Algerines regards you and me - in other words people who don't worship their god - as infidels. When they capture an infidel they kill him or make him a slave. They do not surrender to infidels; they'd sooner die, which is why you can never capture an Algerine. If they're outnumbered, they'll blow the ship up or fight to the last man.'

  'So we leave them?'

  'We leave them', Ramage said. 'If they'd caught us, by now they would be flaying us, or using us as live targets for their muskets, or chopping off limbs with those damned scimitars of theirs.'

  He did not tell Martin that when the Calypso arrived, the Magpie would be battered until she sank. There were too many galleys rowed by hundreds of captured Dutch, Danes, French, British, Italians, Spaniards - anyone who did not come from Algeria or Tunisia and fell into their hands - for any Algerine to be shown mercy.

  The Calypso was a mile away now, tacking yet again in the long zigzag against the wind. He could imagine Aitken and Southwick running from one side of the quarterdeck to the other with their telescopes, trying to see exactly what had happened, and no doubt the lookouts aloft were receiving their share of abuse for not supplying more detailed answers.

  Rossi was proud of the way he had steered the Passe Partout and was just telling Jackson and Stafford for the third time how he and the captain had turned the tartane under the Magpie's flying jibboom when the Cockney said impatiently: 'While you was leaning comfortable against the tiller, Jacko and me and Baxter and Johnnie was usin' the swivels to knock these h'Arabs down like starlings on a bough. 'Ow many you reckon we got, Jacko?'

  'Twenty with each gun', the American said soberly.

  'Madonna! These Saraceni die of fright, eh?'

  Jackson explained how, at the last moment, the French master had produced the bag of musket balls. 'Nice and rusty, too', Stafford said. 'Teach them h'Arabs to chain up our chaps in galleys.'

  'And the Frenchies were cool enough, too', Jackson said. 'Each of 'em was firing aimed shots with muskets and pistols, just like Mr Ramage told 'em.'

  'Well, I thought we was all done for', Stafford admitted. 'I could feel me anchors draggin' fer the next world. Surprisin' how quick yer can fire a swivel when you 'ave to.'

  'Now what is we doing?' Rossi asked Jackson.

  'Waiting for the Calypso to sink that schooner, I reckon.'

  'Is best', Rossi said. 'We rescue them and they kill us. More than three hundred and seventy of them; I heard Mr Martin counting.'

  Stafford shivered. 'Ooh, I can feel 'em nailing out my skin to dry in the sun. I'd make a lovely cushion cover in a harem.'

  'Here comes the Calypso", Jackson said. 'This tack'll bring her practically alongside us.'

  'Jackson!' Ramage called. 'Hoist number sixteen again.'

  'Aye aye, sir, number sixteen, "Engage the enemy more closely".' As he extracted the flag from the bag he murmured: 'If those heathens have any sense they'll stop what they're doing and start asking Allah, or whoever it is, to lend 'em a hand.'

  As soon as the signal was hoisted the Calypso acknowledged it and bore away slightly. She looked a fine sight, spray slicing up from the stem, her portlids open, the muzzles of her guns protruding like a row of stubby black fingers. Jackson noticed she was flying no colours - Mr Aitken must have decided he would not fight under French colours. Not that this was going to be a fight.

  First the Calypso's fore and maincourses were furled with all the speed and smartness as though she was coming into harbour with the admiral watching; then her topgallants followed until she was sailing under topsails and headsails, the fighting rig for a frigate.

  Paolo, standing amidships in the Passe Partout, felt cold, even though the sun was still scorching: his skin was covered in goose pimples and he wished he was on board the Calypso, commanding a division of her guns.

  For centuries the Saraceni had raided the coasts of Italy; even now there was barely ten miles of coast not covered by a watch tower built - on the Tyrrhenian coast anyway - by Philip II of Spain as a warning system and defence against the Saraceni, who regularly landed from the sea by day or night and raided towns and villages. There was not a town in Tuscany that did not have a long history of attacks. La Bella Marsiglia - wasn't that the name of the woman in one of the legends? She was beautiful beyond description and lived on the coast not far from Volterra. She was kidnapped by Saraceni raiders and taken away to their headquarters but, in the only Saraceni story he knew of that had a happy ending, the bey or dey of the city saw her before she was sold off as a slave, fell in love and married her.

  Thank goodness they never reached as far inland as Volterra, though the high walls with the nine gates should keep them out. Do the French continue the rule that the gates were shut an hour after sunset until an hour after dawn? Nine gates - and he was startled to find he could hardly remember their names now, except that the road from Rome came in at the Porta all' Arco; from Siena and Florence by the Porta a Selci. He found it equally difficult to picture the Palazzo; all he could see in his mind was the great carved griffin over each main doorway, the arms and crest of the Kingdom of Volterra. He never did discover what dragon the griffin in the coat of arms was killing, but
the griffin was certainly rampant and the victor.

  And there was the Calypso - he found himself cheering with the rest of them at the first lieutenant's seamanship: he backed the foretopsail just to leeward of the Magpie so that as the frigate turned and stopped, the gun captains of the whole larboard broadside could aim almost at their leisure.

  There was a rumble, like the first hint of thunder in the mountains, and smoke spurted along on the Calypso's larboard side and then began coming out of the open ports on the starboard side as the wind blew the rest of the smoke through the ship.

  Now the maintopsail was backed and the Calypso began making a sternboard so that her bow swung through 180 degrees and as she went slowly astern, passing the Magpie, she fired her starboard broadside.

  Paolo could picture the men hurriedly reloading the larboard guns now as the frigate's yards were braced sharp up and she went ahead to pass under the Magpie's stern and luff up on the schooner's other side, once again backing her foretopsail while her starboard broadside fired again. For the second time Aitken backed the maintopsail for another sternboard so that the frigate's bow paid off and the larboard broadside would bear. Again the guns fired and Paolo could see the rippling flash from the muzzles, but the ship was becoming so full of smoke from four quick broadsides that the flashes were becoming glows. Despite the breeze the smoke was remaining, a low cloud hanging heavy, oily and opaque, blurring the Calypso's outline.

  Paolo walked aft and asked Martin if he could use the glass: neither he nor Mr Ramage were using it. Before he turned the glass on the Magpie, Paolo saw that the captain's face was taut, as though the skin had shrunk; his high cheekbones seemed to have no flesh over them and his eyes were sunken, as if he had not slept for a week. Martin, too, was obviously upset; his face was white, and he was gripping the bulwark capping.

  The glass showed Paolo that the Magpie had been so battered by the Calypso's broadsides that her planking and decking looked more like the sides of a cage. Men, Saraceni, were leaping over the side to avoid the round and grapeshot but they could not swim. And some of them, in moments before they jumped to their death, shook their fists first at the Passe Partout and then at the Calypso.