Ramage's Signal r-11

by Dudley Pope

  Two seamen held lanterns while another two swung big mauls to drive out the wooden wedges holding the battens in place round the edge of the coamings to free the heavy canvas cover protecting the thick hatch boards.

  'Just get out three boards', Ramage said, and the canvas was rolled back enough for them to be lifted up.

  Even the weak light of the lantern showed that Ramage's guess had been right, and the powder had been stowed in the aftermost of the brig's two holds: the copper hoops of the powder barrels reflected a dull redness. They were well stowed with shifting boards. 'Bung up and bilge free', Ramage thought to himself: the bung of each barrel was uppermost, and none of the barrels rested against the side, or the bilge, of the ship. A wise shipper always paid a premium and specified that his goods, if in barrels, should be stowed 'bung up and bilge free', but the master of a ship carrying so much powder needed no urging: a bung working itself loose as the ship pitched would mean, if the barrel was not stowed bung uppermost, that a sixth of a ton of powder would cascade into the bilges and, despite the copper hoops, if one barrel rubbed against another, it could cause sufficient friction to ignite a few grains - fewer than a dandy would bother to blow from his sleeve if he spilled some snuff - and that would be enough to destroy the ship.

  The top tier of barrels was only three feet below the level of the hatch coaming, and Ramage looked round for Stafford.

  'You have those lengths of fuse?'

  'Aye aye, sir.' Stafford held up a canvas bag.

  The sight of the bag made Ramage angry again. He had asked the gunner for lengths of slowmatch that would burn ten minutes, with a foot left over at one end. The damned man had backed and filled, saying he could not be certain of the burning time of a length of slowmatch between five minutes and thirty. Finally Ramage had decided to use the much less rugged fuse, and fortunately the Calypso's magazine contained two types made from mealed powder, the finest available. But again the gunner had avoided specifying the speeds at which they burned, and an enraged and frustrated Ramage had made the man bring up his notebooks and found that they recorded that fuse made from good mealed powder burned at the rate of three inches in seven seconds and the other twelve inches in one minute. Ramage chose the slower and had then given the whole coil to Jackson and Stafford. After doing a quick sum, he told them to cut ten eleven-foot lengths. That would give each one ten minutes' burning time, plus a foot.

  Five lengths had been handed over to Southwick for the Muscade, and now Stafford had five lengths for the Merle. Fuse burned fast, so for this sort of work long lengths were needed; on the other hand, with the longer fuse, as Jackson had pointed out, there was the advantage that when the fuse was first lit the flame was farther from the powder.

  Already two seamen were calling from the outboard end of the starboard maintopsail yardarm to a third standing below. Ramage heard a thud as a rope dropped, then the rattle of chain. They were fitting the first of the grapnels which would hang from all the yards at varying heights, ready to catch in the French 74's rigging or any hull projection so that the Merle stuck to her like a burr on a woollen sock.

  The topmen, without awaiting orders, were already aloft, checking over the gaskets holding the sails furled and slackening them, and making sure of the lead of halyards. As soon as they finished their work, the grapnel men would trace the leads of braces, sheets and tacks.

  After glancing at his watch by the light of the lantern that Jackson was carrying (Ramage and Southwick had decided that apart from the 74 being too far away to see any lights, it would be quite natural for lanterns to be in use on board merchant ships at anchor) he found they were several minutes ahead of the rough schedule.

  Ramage went back to the opened hatch and found Stafford and another seaman, Wells, inside and grunting as they gently tapped out the bung of a powder barrel using a small copper-headed maul.

  Stafford glanced up and saw Ramage standing in the moonlight looking down at him. 'Yer know, sir, gives yer a funny feelin' sittin' on top o' a hunerd an' fifty tons o' powder!'

  'I'm sure it does. Try standing', Ramage said unsympathetically. 'And even though I'm up here, I doubt if the extra inch of deck planking gives me much of an advantage.'

  'S'pose not, sir, but this bluddy bung ... ah! Here she comes.'

  The moonlight was bright enough for Ramage to spot the small hole in the top of the barrel and see how carefully Stafford wiped the bung clean of powder and put it down beside the maul. Then he pushed a finger into the hole, obviously testing how far it was to the powder, which always shook down like flour in a jar.

  'Four inches', he said to himself. 'That means the fuse goes in eight inches. So a foot to spare were just right.'

  He moved so that he was astride another barrel.

  'Let's 'ave the maul, Arry.'

  Again he began tapping to lift the bung of the new barrel, at the same time blowing gently to disperse any grains that came out with the copper-sheathed bung. Quickly he pulled it out, wiped off any traces of powder, and passed it and the maul to Wells.

  Three inches', he announced after putting his finger into the bunghole. He saw Ramage still watching him. The French contractors seem 'onest enough, sir: they don't sell short measure.'

  'There are no contractors', Ramage said. 'Like our Boardof Ordnance, they make their own.'

  'Supposed to be poor stuff though, ain't it, sir?'

  'Yes - but don't get careless! It burns all right, but not as evenly as ours. That means if you fire five rounds from the same gun at the same elevation you'll get first grazes at fivedifferent places.'

  'Well, we won't have to bother here', Stafford grunted ashe slid carefully across to the third barrel and called for themaul.

  Ramage walked aft to find Jackson turning the wheel one way and then the other. 'Just testing the wheel ropes, sir. Six turns from hard over to hard over.'

  'You might look at the rudderhead and tiller, in case of rot...'

  'Done that already, sir', Jackson said. 'By the way, the three axes are ready on the foredeck beside the cable.'

  Slight movements in the rigging caught Ramage's eye, and he saw four grapnels spinning slightly in the breeze like dead carrion crows suspended outside a gamekeeper's lodge. The three men were now working out on the end of the foreyard, rigging the remaining grapnels.

  Ramage walked forward to where the second anchor was stowed in its chocks. It was well lashed in its place so that a heavy sea should not dislodge it. Yet if the brig and the 74 collided, one of the flukes might well embed itself in the planking of the Frenchman's hull, a stroke of luck one could not rely on but might encourage. He told a seaman to collect an axe from the foredeck and cut some of the anchor lashings.

  He waited until the man returned and described which to cut, not wanting to see the anchor suddenly drop over the side, because its cable was stowed below.

  He walked aft to the lantern, looked at his watch again and saw they should soon get under way.

  'Six minutes to go!' he bellowed so that all the men could hear.

  At the hatchway he saw that Stafford and Wells had removed five bungs, and that one thin black line, a fuse, already led from the deck outside the coaming, over the top and down into the hold to the bunghole of a barrel, where it disappeared like an escaping snake. Stafford would have pushed the fuse well down into the powder, using precisely the extra foot of length, and it was held in place by an encircling collar of cloth pushed down round it, holding it steady in the centre of the bunghole.

  A Marine was now standing by the coaming: his job was to make sure no one accidentally touched a fuse so that its other end was pulled out of a barrel.

  Yet it was all too obvious!

  As Ramage stood there looking at the hatch he put himself in the place of a French officer jumping down on to the Merle's deck from the 74 and seeing five sparkling and sizzling fuses leading down into a partly-open hold. In that moment he would know the Merle was not a fireship about to burst into flames and that h
e risked nothing if he snatched out those burning fuses and tossed them over the side.

  He waited as Wells, under Stafford's direction, draped one more length of fuse over the edge of the coaming, then a third, fourth and finally the fifth. After a few moments, Stafford and Wells climbed out of the hold. Stafford, mopping his face, saw Ramage and said: 'It's remarkable 'ot down there, sir.'

  'Come over here - now take a good look at it', Ramage said without comment.

  'Yus, I see what you mean, sir: the first Frog on board is going ter see fuses and guess ...'

  'Throw one of those hatch boards over the side, put down two again - leaving the gap against the coaming - and then pull the canvas cover back in place across the hatch, putting a roll in the edge so that it doesn't touch the fuses. Then 1 doubt if anyone jumping on board would spot anything in the excitement - the fuses should have burnt enough that they'd have gone under the canvas and out of sight.'

  'Come on, Arry', Stafford said, 'but be very, very careful wiv those two planks.'

  Ramage looked again at his watch.

  'Four minutes to go', he shouted. 'Topmen aloft, axemen to the foredeck, helmsman to the wheel, grapnel men to the sheets and braces!'

  He wondered if anyone else had ever given such a bizarre series of orders. He watched the men moving about, sure footed as cats and as shadowy in the moonlight.

  'Two minutes to go. Topmen, are you ready?'

  There were shouts aloft from both masts.

  'Axemen, are you ready?'

  Three yells came aft from the foredeck.

  'Grapnel men, are sheets and braces sorted out?'

  Laughs and shouts gave him the answer.

  He went back to the hatch and was startled by the change: it would take a very careful examination to reveal that anything had been done to the hold since it was stowed in France or Spain; five thin lines hung down a few inches, but in the darkness no one would notice them; the hatch looked battened down, ready for sea.

  'Excellent, Stafford and Wells. You'd both make good smugglers!'

  'Excise men, sir', protested Stafford. 'Always on the side of the law, we are.'

  Jackson was waiting by the wheel and Ramage looked yet again at his watch.

  'One minute to go ... Stand by, axemen. Right, cut the cable!'

  A series of thuds as the blades bit through the rope, a hiss of the cable snaking out the hawse and a splash as it dropped into the sea told him the Merle was adrift.

  'Foretopmen - lay out - let fall!'

  The foretopsail tumbled down, the moon now high and bright enough to give the sail some colour.

  Slowly he went through the sequence of orders that set the brig's topsails and then the courses; orders that were adapted to the few men available. Jackson at the wheel needed no orders; he had already noted the approximate position of the French 74, although she was now too far away to see and had probably furled all her sails so that she did not show up against the hills and cliffs.

  Ramage went aft to the taffrail and looked down at the cutter. The boatkeeper was asleep, lying curled up in the sternsheets. The painter was hanging clear, free of kinks, and Ramage decided to leave him, telling Jackson to give the man a hail once they neared the enemy.

  Inshore, lit up by the moon, Ramage could see the Muscade under way on a parallel course and imagined Southwick looking across to make sure the Merle was all right.

  Jackson said quietly: 'It's made Mr Southwick ten years younger, sir.'

  'Has it really?' Ramage was startled at the remark because he had been so busy during the last hour on board the Calypso that, although he had been giving orders to Southwick - not many, because they were not necessary - he had not had time to notice his appearance.

  'You know how it does, once he knows he's going to be able to get into a fight, sir', Jackson reminded him.

  'But this isn't going to be a fight', Ramage said, finding himself puzzled again. 'As I told you all before we left the Calypso, if the French capture us they'll treat the brigs as fireships and hang us all.'

  'Yes, sir', Jackson said in the stolid way that seamen had perfected over the centuries when they answered officers who clearly did not understand the situation.

  The men at the sheets and braces had the sails properly trimmed, the topmen were down on deck and the axemen were hoisting the headsails. Soon they too were sheeted home, and the only man doing any work on board the Merle was Jackson, who turned the wheel occasionally a spoke one way and then another as he watched the luffs of the sails.

  'Harvest moon', Jackson noted laconically, nodding his head to the east, where the full moon was now a golden disc well clear of the hills.

  'Yes, the seasons race by. We're getting old, Jackson!'

  'I was fighting the British afore you were born, sir', Jackson said dryly.

  'If you live to a real ripe old age', Ramage said with affected seriousness, 'you can come and work for me: I'll find you a simple job on the estate - like sawing up the big logs for winter.'

  'How many fireplaces would that be, sir?'

  'Only a dozen or so, and the kitchens', Ramage said.

  'So I can look forward to an interesting and restful old age.'

  'Yes', Ramage said, 'we both can. You can vary the length of the logs and I'll measure them. We need to stay alive, that's all.'

  'I'll tell Stafford that if he turns up at the gates of Blazey Hall when he's seventy he might get a job, too.'

  'As long as he brings his own saw.'

  'Perhaps Rossi could start younger', Jackson said, his face expressionless. 'The Marchesa might like to hear him singing and cursing in Italian from time to time.'

  Ramage ignored the implication of Jackson's remark, but it started him thinking. Stafford at the age of seventy - that would be in about forty years' time. By then young Lord Ramage would have inherited his father's title and be the ancient and eleventh Earl of Blazey, nearly seventy himself. Who would be the Countess of Blazey? Who would he have married? She might even be a widow by then. Or more likely Lord Ramage would, in the phrase so beloved by lawyers and biographers, have predeceased his father, his head long since knocked off by a roundshot, and the earldom of Blazey, the second oldest in the country, would have become extinct, or been revived and given to some shoddy politician who caught the King's fancy.

  He walked aft to throw off the gloomy thoughts, though he felt no embarrassment or irritation: standing on top of 150 tons of gunpowder with fuses leading down into the hold, and steering for an enemy ship of the line, meant that anyone with the slightest imagination could be forgiven for a few passing reflections on mortality. Yet making a habit of reflecting on mortality was a quick way of driving a man to seek answers in the bottle. Anyway, he thought as he glanced down at the still sleeping boatkeeper, it is a glorious warm night with a steady breeze. Jackson's harvest moon, and an unsuspecting enemy just down the coast, with Southwick and the other brig abeam. Aitken and his convoy would by now be well on their way to Gibraltar safe from interference because they were sailing under the French flag ... The Calypso seemed distant, another world. Paolo would have enjoyed being on this expedition, but he was learning more in Aitken's convoy.

  Ramage sat down on the breech of one of the two 6-pounder sternchase guns and looked at his watch. Two hours past midnight. The wind might have freshened a little, but the brigs were slow, and if the damned jibs did not stop slatting he would drop them. They had almost a soldier's wind so that for most of the time the headsails were blanketed by the forecourse. He knew he was now getting jumpy; when the slatting of sails irritated him, it was time to relax. He began walking forward to talk to the men.

  Stafford and Arry - everyone, including Southwick and Aitken, always referred to him by that name - and the Marine guarding the ends of the fuses were sitting on the deck, their backs against the hatch coaming, and Arry was just finishing some lurid story concerning another man's wife in Scarborough: a woman, it seemed, possessed of inordinate desires and a weary and
pliant husband.

  'The three of you had better repeat to me what your orders are.'

  They looked at each other and Ramage pointed to the Marine, whose style of speaking derived much from the drill sergeants under whom he had served in the past.

  'Hupon the horder "Light fuses!" sir - that'll be from you - I 'old the lantern hopen in such a position that William Stafford, hable seaman, and Arry, hordinary seaman, can happly the end of each fuse to the candle flame. I make sure each fuse is burning steady an' when Stafford 'as hassured 'imself as well, we run like 'ell to the boat, which will be halongside the larboard quarter.'

  Stafford grunted. 'An' we proceed to row like 'ell out of range an' back to the Calypso.'

  'You're sure you've used exactly a foot of fuse in fitting each one into a barrel?' Ramage asked him.

  Stafford scrabbled about on the deck and then stood up, proffering a wooden stick with a fork cut in one end. 'It's exactly eleven inches to the cleft, sir; I cut it meself. First I measured orf a foot o' fuse, nipped it with finger and thumb, then used this 'ere fork in the end to 'old a bight of fuse while I pushed it down into the barrel. It takes an inch to fit in the fork. Before I pulled the stick out I pressed the powder down 'ard wiv my fingers, and then once the stick was out I pressed down again, so the fuse is firm in the powder. Then we wound rags round like a bandage to 'old the fuse steady in the centre of the bunghole.'

  The Cockney could have answered Ramage's question with a simple 'Yes sir', but the fact that he had been sensible enough to get a stick of the right length and make a fork in the end showed that he was not blindly obeying orders.

  'That was a good idea', Ramage said. 'We need explode only one barrel to send off the rest, but with fuses to five barrels we have five insurance policies.'

  The three grapnel men were sitting by the foremast on the starboard side, their grapnels swinging and spinning at various heights above them.