Ramage's Signal r-11

by Dudley Pope

  Now more merchant ships were coming into the gulf, the more careful of them with leadsmen in the chains calling out depths, though the majority of the masters obviously looked at ships like the Sarazine and Golondrina, which they knew drew much more water than they did, and steered straight for them, assuming they had kept on a straight course after rounding Sant' Antioco.

  The Calypso's pinnace was now rowing between the merchant ships. The Marine lieutenant had been on enough cutting-out expeditions to be perfectly at home in the eight-oared boat, and to him the only thing that seemed at all strange was that all the men in her were dressed either in French uniform or ragged clothes.

  Jackson, usually Captain Ramage's coxswain in the gig, was commanding the green cutter for the time being, and threatening the sixteen boarders and six oarsmen with dire punishment if they did not stop talking: he did not mind the teasing but he was afraid they might be overheard by someone on board one of the French ships.

  Clearly the captain of the frigate had decided to exercise all his boats' crews - that was the opinion of the Sarazine's master, who had just noticed three or four of them, and he was wondering how he could use the French Navy to help him with watering - there was bound to be water available somewhere in the gulf. His casks had leaked, thanks to the pounding the ship had received in the seas left over from the mistral, and he could never force his men to make do with only their daily ration of water: abetted by the mate, they simply drew more at night, when he was asleep.

  Now, however, he was faced with having to launch his own boat, which was too small to carry more than one cask, and he had plenty of work on the rigging to occupy his seven seamen without sending them off watering. So perhaps, if he could speak to one of those Navy officers, they would take a couple of casks, and ... He remembered he had some bottles of manzanilla, bought cheaply in Alicante, which might help. At that moment he saw that the frigate's launch would pass close astern, and he walked to the taffrail to give a hail.

  Ramage, sitting in the sternsheets of the gig with Kenton, said quietly: 'I think the ships are used to the idea of us rowing round, so we'll board the Golondrina now. If you go alongside to starboard, none of the others will see us.'

  The gig turned and appeared to be going close along the edge of the beach until she was almost abreast the Spanish ship, and then she turned four points to larboard, which brought the master of the ship to the bulwark to give a friendly wave.

  Ramage waved back and when the master saw the gig was coming to his ship he called for seamen to take her painter and sternfast. As soon as the gig was alongside, Ramage scrambled on board and greeted the master cheerfully, making a joke about the privateer schooner as he went aft, so that when the master turned naturally to walk with him, his back was towards the entry port.

  'The tartane was fast', the master said. 'I could not believe my eyes when I saw those masts falling. The British must have been sleeping!'

  'She was not British', Ramage said, touching the side of his nose mysteriously. 'You did not see the affair of her flag?'

  'No, only that she had the English flag, the red one.'

  'Ah, but at the last moment she changed it! She hauled down the British flag and hoisted another...' Ramage let his voice die away mysteriously.

  'Hoisted another} What other? With whom else are we at war, señor?'

  'The crescent and star ...'

  'An Algerine? Caramba! They must have captured her from the English and kept her colours!'

  'It has been done before and will be done again, I've no doubt', Ramage said gloomily, a note of sorrow in his voice as he gave a signal to Kenton. 'As you said of the privateer when she lost her mast, it is hard to believe one's own eyes.'

  The master found himself staring at the muzzle of a pistol with a hexagonal barrel, one of the two that he had admired when he saw the French officer wearing them with belt hooks.

  Now the French officer had his thumb on - that click: now it was cocked! 'Be careful!' the master said hastily, 'do not point that pistol at me, anyone would think -'

  He broke off as he looked round and saw his ship's company all lying flat on the deck, a man from the gig standing over each of them.

  'What is this? Have you gone mad? This is not an Algerine - nor an English ship!'

  Ramage pointed across to the Calypso. 'No', he could not resist saying, 'but she is.'

  'But... but... she is French. Why, I recognize the class. And the young officer from her who brought over my orders at Foix - you are not going to tell me he was English!'

  'No, Italian, but he is an officer of the Royal Navy, as I am. I must introduce myself', Ramage said, 'and may I take it that this' - he gestured with the pistol - 'is not necessary?'

  The master nodded vigorously. Ramage lowered the hammer gently and slipped the hook over his belt.

  He gave a slight bow. 'Ramage - Captain Ramage, at your service.'

  'Nombre de Dios', the master said, and sat down on the deck with a thud, his face white, his upper lip and brow beading with perspiration. 'Excuse me, señor, I suddenly feel faint. I know that name.'

  'It might be someone else', Ramage said politely, helping the man to his feet again. 'Breathe deeply. It helps usually.'

  The Spaniard took a few deep breaths, exhaling, it seemed to Ramage, pure garlic.

  'There may be others called Ramage, but only one would - Caramba! How did you know that at the last moment the convoy would go to Foix?'

  'I sent the signal', Ramage said blandly. 'The French semaphore system is most useful.'

  The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders, as a priest might admit the Devil's existence. 'Now you capture the whole convoy, eh? And I thought you were simply exercising your boats.'

  'Oh, but I am', Ramage assured him. 'Now, if you'll join your men - I suggest you sit there by the mainmast. I have a few words to say to them.'

  By now the men of the gig's boarding party were bent down below the level of the bulwarks. Two of them returning from searching the fo'c'sle were pushing along a man they had found sleeping.

  Ramage raised his voice. 'You may sit up', he said in Spanish, and noted there were ten men in addition to the master, and one of them was, from his dress, the mate.

  'This ship is now a British prize. You will all go down to the gig, and I warn you that if you shout or try to signal any of the ships, you'll be run through with a cutlass. Do as you are told and you will not be hurt.'

  He walked over to Kenton and said: 'I leave you to your new command. And don't forget to hoist the signal for Southwick; he worries about you.'

  The Spanish crew of the Golondrina climbed down into the gig, in which there were only the six oarsmen, but close by Jackson steered the green cutter so that his boarding party covered the prisoners. Ramage followed the Spanish master and took the tiller, and with a farewell wave to Kenton, the painter and sternfast were cast off and the gig headed back for the Calypso and then, without any of the other ships noticing them, turned away for the beach.

  Ramage said to the Spanish master: 'I am going to be generous. If I was an Algerine, I would cut all your throats, eh?'

  The master nodded miserably and rubbed his unshaven chin in a reflex gesture.

  'I am going to land you on the beach. You will all immediately go inland out of sight. Cagliari is to the southeast, and I suggest you follow the coast road. Do not try to raise the alarm because there are fourteen other ships in the convoy, and you could cause a great deal of bloodshed.'

  Ramage saw that the man understood. He would be marooned on an alien island, but there were many towns and ports in Sardinia, and he would eventually get back to Spain. The gig's keel scraped on the sand, and the men of the Golondrina scrambled on shore while Jackson's men kept them covered from the cutter.

  Southwick wrote carefully in his log, using the slate to help his memory: 'Two pm wind W by S. Anchored with best bower in five fms, Vacca I. bearing SW by W, white house on S. Antioco NW by ½W, ruin on P. Botte E by S. 2.30 pm
all boats hoisted out, manned and three pm, left under general command of the captain. Pumped ship at ten ins. Fresh water remaining twenty-one tons. 3.15 pm first ships of French convoy entering gulf and anchoring as convenient.'

  Southwick sniffed as he wiped his pen dry. 'As convenient' be damned; they were just sailing in, clewing up or brailing sails, turning head to wind and tipping anchors over the side as though disposing of rubbish. The Sarazine would foul the Calypso the moment the wind had any east in it; the Golondrina needed only a north wind to bring her crashing into the Calypso, and two other ships only a little smaller than the Sarazine obviously had not let out enough scope on their cables and would drag on to the frigate if the wind picked up. And the damnable thing was that he could do nothing about it: no one left on board the Calypso spoke a word of French: Mr Ramage was away with the boats and Mr Orsini was only just now coming into sight with the Passe Partout.

  He had not heard a shot fired so far: not a pistol, not a musket, not a great gun: it was waiting for the sound of a shot that was making him so bad-tempered. If anything went wrong, what could he do, with no boats and fifty men left on board, all of them old wrecks like himself, short of wind, a quarter of them wearing trusses, half of them bleary of eye, and most shaky of gait? All of them had spirit enough, but a warlike yell and threat of a broadside would not be enough to get even one of them up to the mainyard in under five minutes.

  He, Edward Southwick, had to admit that at the moment he was a Falstaff at the head of a rag-tag and bobtail party of seamen who, when mixed with the rest of the ship's company, did their jobs well enough: there was no need for the cook to have two legs and no reason why his mate should not be cross-eyed - except in a situation like this.

  'Signal from the Golondrina, sir', a seaman called down.

  Cursing, Southwick grabbed his hat and sword and hurried up the ladder.

  'French flags, sir, I've worked it out as being this one.' He pointed to it in the signal book. 'I don't understand the lingo, sir, but the book mentions "charpentier". Perhaps it means send over the carpenter and his mates?'

  Southwick nodded, and said: 'Just acknowledge it.' He did not need to know French to understand the message: it was a code arranged by Mr Ramage so that he and the other boarding parties could use the French system to send signals to the Calypso which, read by any other of the French ships, would seem innocent enough.

  So Mr Ramage had secured the Golondrina and would be leaving young Kenton in command with his party while he took the Spanish crew on shore in the gig. He opened his telescope and a few moments later saw the gig appear round the stern of the Spanish ship, followed by the green cutter. He had to admit that Mr Ramage was right; with so many of the Calypso's boats rowing round apparently at random it all seemed quite natural and no one would notice. The mixture of French uniforms and old clothes, for example, was typically the way the French would do it, so that the gig making for the beach with ten or more Spaniards from the Golondrina looked no different from when she first went alongside with a boarding party from the Calypso. The substitution of Spaniards for boarding party was not noticeable.

  The Golondrina would have been no problem because, of course, Mr Ramage spoke Spanish, but what about Aitken with the Sarazine?Still, the muzzle of a pistol pointing at you had a language all of its own.

  He saw a movement of colour just as the seaman spoke: the same signal was being hoisted from the Sarazine and the launch was leaving her and rowing steadily along the coast: obviously Aitken had ordered his prisoners to be landed a long way from the Golondrina people.

  Martin steered the red cutter another point to starboard. The brig Bergère had now anchored and he could distinguish the master, a fat man wearing a beret and looking as though he would be more at home sitting under an old plane tree in the place of a small town in the south of France, and the mate, a lanky man in a red shirt. He had counted nine seamen and petty officers, only one more than Orsini had noted, so the boy had done a good job.

  He saw that both the Golondrina and Sarazine were flying the signal, so Mr Aitken and Kenton had taken their prizes.

  It was easy enough to see that the Bergère brig had been built in England and, remembering what he had learned all the time he had been growing up as the son of the master shipwright at Chatham Dockyard, he guessed from her sheer and the shape of her stern that she had been built on the south coast not too far from Portsmouth. At Bursledon perhaps, or even East Cowes. Getting on for three hundred tons and down on her marks - he could see that she was pierced for six guns and carried them, 9-pounders from the look of it. According to Orsini her holds were full of carriages for land guns, harnesses, hides and a ground tier of guns to mount on the carriages.

  There were fewer Frenchmen on deck now: with the anchor down and sails furled (bundled up, to his way of thinking) they probably thought their day's work was over.

  'Stand by, men, I'm going alongside now.'

  He pushed the tiller over with his shoulder as he crouched for a moment to check that his pistols were held tightly by the belt hooks.

  One of his seamen was standing up in the bow, holding a boathook horizontally across his chest. No one in the Bergère showed the slightest interest; in fact the red cutter was now so close that a man in the brig would have to stand on the bulwark and peer down to see her.

  He could scramble up the side - none of the other ships would see - or go on board in a dignified fashion, followed by his men and pretending until the last moment to be French. Mr Ramage had said they should get as far as possible with bluff, and from the indifference of the men in the Bergère, Martin was sure he and half a dozen men could get to the wheel without being challenged.

  Then the cutter was alongside, the men using the oars without orders and then boating them, while the seamen forward hooked on to an eyebolt with the boathook. A second seaman climbed up the ship's side in a leisurely fashion with the painter while a third went up with the sternfast. Martin, mouth dry, his heart seeming to skid over cobblestones rather than beat regularly, jammed his hat (according to the label inside it belonged to someone called Pierre Duhamel, now prisoner in the Calypso) firmly on his head and climbed up the side battens.

  For the last few seconds, as his head appeared over the level of the deck at the entryport, he looked round the Bergère and saw the fat man in the beret standing right aft and unaware that there was a boat alongside. Catching sight of Martin he gave a cheerful wave and bellowed for the mate, whose red shirt Martin could see on the foredeck.

  Martin waved back and walked to the centreline to leave room for his boarding party, who were following him. As soon as the bosun's mate who was his second-in-command arrived beside him, Martin said casually: 'Everyone except the captain is forward. Secure them - watch the man in a red shirt, he's the mate.'

  With that Martin strolled aft in what he felt was a casual manner, hoping the captain would watch him and not the boarding party going forward.

  The Frenchman looked puzzled and called something to Martin, who grinned and waved reassuringly, increasing his pace. A few moments later there was a yell from forward and Martin guessed it was the red-shirted mate.

  Three quick strides brought him up to the master with a pistol in his right hand. He stopped and pulled the hammer back with his thumb, the click seeming to sound like a small hammer on an anvil.

  He then repeated, parrot-fashion, the French phrase that Mr Ramage had made him learn, which told the master that his ship was now a British prize and any attempt to raise an alarm would mean death. To emphasize 'mort' Martin jammed the pistol in the man's stomach, and as he bent forward in an instinctive reaction, Martin could not resist the schoolboy gesture of pulling the floppy beret down so that it covered the man's eyes, the band jamming across his nose.

  With the captain momentarily blinded, Martin spun round to look forward in time to see the French mate collapsing into the arms of one of his own men, having just been punched in the stomach by the Calypso's burl
iest boarder. The rest of the French promptly raised their arms in surrender and were told by the bosun's mate, using sign language, to go down into the cutter.

  Martin, wanting to keep him occupied until all the men were in the cutter, pushed the French captain so that he lost his balance and fell over. At that moment one of the Calypsos, who had climbed up on to the bulwarks, called out: 'The gig's coming, sir, with the captain!'

  Martin waved an acknowledgement: it was part of the plan that the gig or red cutter would help convoy the boats taking crews to the beach. As soon as Martin saw the red-shirted man helped down into the cutter, he jerked the captain's beret upwards - and saw why the man wore it: he was completely bald. The Frenchman blinked in the sudden light, looked round for his men and saw Martin pointing to the entry port. He walked over to it, watched by the wary bosun's mate with a cocked pistol, and Martin jumped up on to the bulwarks.

  Ramage saw him almost immediately, waved as if congratulating him, and then pointed aloft. For a moment Martin was puzzled. Then he remembered.

  'Bosun's mate, hoist the signal.'

  He now had his command. Yes, he had commanded the Passe Partout for a few hours but, much as he enjoyed having Orsini with him, it was not quite the same. Now he commanded a brig of three hundred tons, worth hundreds of pounds in prize money.

  Rennick was still circling with the pinnace, waiting for the Matilda to anchor while the bosun with the jolly boat edged over towards the Rosette schooner, which had anchored and whose crew would, in a few minutes, be busy furling the sails and unlikely to take much notice of a frigate's boat coming alongside.