Ramage's Challenge r-15

by Dudley Pope

  Sir Henry mentally shrugged his shoulders. From what he had seen and heard of Ramage, the youngster would do what he considered correct, cover or not. He had stood up to Cargill without knowing (or caring about) the opinions of three admirals and a lieutenant-general, and he did it because he had confidence in himself.

  Sir Henry looked across the table at Ramage as Silkin began serving the next course. "A very creditable meal, Ramage. We must be dealing your livestock a crippling blow! So let's regard this feast as something special to celebrate our release, and from now on we take our chance with hard tack!"

  The marquis looked startled. "I don't quite understand, Sir Henry: is this not the usual Navy fare?"

  "Indeed not! The splendid mutton came from one of Ramage's own animals, killed for the occasion: likewise the fowl. And, of course, all the wine. The Navy lives on salt pork and salt beef; if captains want better, they buy it themselves and carry it on board. You commented to me earlier about hearing a sheep bleating. Well, you've probably just eaten the bleat! And although the seamen get wine twice daily in the Mediterranean, it isn't of the quality Ramage is serving you. The seamen call their tots 'blackstrap'. But Ramage, you seem to have drunk little or nothing."

  Ramage looked embarrassed. He rarely drank wine and never spirits, but he had learned to keep the fact to himself because too many people regarded a man who never drank as a reproach to themselves.

  Cargill belched contentedly and wiped his face with a napkin. "Wine's for women," he said contemptuously. "No guts to it. As much use as small beer to a drayman."

  "I'm sorry sir, I haven't offered you gin."

  The Earl of Innes glanced at Cargill, but the remark - an insult if Cargill understood its significance - had gone right over his head. Gin was cheap; it was rated the drink for fallen women, debtors and servants: it brought most relief from life's cares for the fewest pennies. Cargill merely belched again and shook his head.

  "My steward will look after you now, gentlemen," Ramage said. "If you'll excuse me, I must see what is happening on deck."

  "I'll join you," Sir Henry said. "I'm beginning to feel sleepy after such a fine meal."

  As the two men began pacing the quarterdeck, both noted that the wind was whining in the rigging and the wave crests were beginning to tumble and break, while the horizon to the south was now joined by haze to the paler sky. Argentario was no longer a sharp mountainous outline but a blurred hump to the east while the mainland was almost indistinguishable.

  Sir Henry waved an arm forward, to the south. "No mistaking that, Ramage: stand by for a scirocco!And it's going to last three days, just as it always does."

  "Not all of them, sir," Ramage said cautiously.

  "This one is going to, though. Just look at that cloud streaming to leeward from the peak of Argentario . . . and it's so damned clammy. The Arabs have the right idea about the scirocco."

  Ramage raised his eyebrows, and Sir Henry said: "If an Arab murders his wife when there's a scirocco blowing, he's not blamed. How about that, eh?"

  "I'd heard that, sir, but since an Arab has a harem with several wives, it mightn't be the advantage that Christians think."

  "Hmm . . . never thought of it like that," Sir Henry said. "Anyway, it'll be knocking up a sea below Forte della Stella..."

  "The fishermen don't leave Port' Ercole when there's a bad scirocco. Those caught out usually make for Santo Stefano and wait there in the lee for it to blow out. There's a fish market..."

  Sir Henry guessed that Ramage was talking only to avoid the main problem. "It means we can't do a dam' thing for three days - more, if we have to wait for a heavy swell to ease down."

  "Yes, three or four days, sir."

  "And you should be making for Gibraltar, not hanging round here to collect wives."

  "Hostages, not wives," Ramage said gently.

  "Lord St Vincent won't like it if anything goes wrong as a result of your waiting."

  "My orders cover it, sir," Ramage said.

  "Wives?"

  "No, 'hostages' sir. My orders, signed by four members of the Board, are to rescue the British hostages at Pitigliano. However, I found they weren't there. Instead half were at Giglio and the other half are - we hope - at Port' Ercole."

  "If anything goes wrong, they'll flay you and use your skin as parchment," Sir Henry said. "You realize that, don't you? I couldn't help you: I'd be an involved party. In fact my skin might be nailed up alongside yours." He thought for a moment. "Were the hostages named?"

  "Some of them. But neither of us can leave this coast with the wives still in Forte della Stella, or wherever they are, can we sir."

  Sir Henry recognized it as a comment, not a question. "Not that many wives," he said bleakly. "Mine, the Earl of Innes's, the other two admirals' (tho' I think Admiral Keeler doesn't feel the separation as strongly as the rest of us), and the wives of the marquis, our two earls and the viscount."

  "But not General Cargill's wife?" Ramage asked carefully.

  "He's not married - or, at least, his wife wasn't with him when he was arrested," Sir Henry said. "Odd, I don't know for sure whether he's married or not."

  "Eight wives," Ramage said. "Not a large party. I'm surprised the French kept you apart."

  "Oh, I think there are more than eight hostages in that party," Sir Henry said, "and I don't think they're all women. It's just a feeling I have, but I've always considered our wives simply to be part of a second group of hostages."

  "You mean, sir, that there could be other naval and army officers?"

  Sir Henry shook his head. "No, I think the hostages referred to in your orders (however you interpret the wording) are the ones you have rescued. I know that because I know which flag officers left the country when peace was signed - as you well know, no serving naval officer can go abroad in peacetime without the Board's permission. Same goes for the soldiers: they have to ask the Horse Guards, and the earl knows who applied. So any men held hostage with our wives must be civilians - people like the marquis."

  "Why were the marquis and the others separated and put with you then?" Ramage mused.

  "The French probably have a scale," Sir Henry speculated grimly. "After all, there's a scale both countries use when exchanging prisoners: a post-captain equals six lieutenants; a lieutenant equals ten midshipmen, and so on."

  "And a marquis?"

  Sir Henry laughed. "This one is probably the first the French have ever taken. Obviously they don't value them too highly because he's been put in with admirals, generals, earls and a viscount!"

  "The marquis is lucky," Ramage said. "In France before the Revolution, the title was not ranked as highly as in Britain. There are many more of them, of course, and the French didn't have earls."

  Sir Henry's thoughts returned to Port' Ercole. "You have to waste three days, perhaps more . . ."

  "I intend to wait here," Ramage said. Both men noted the use of the the word "intend"; this was what Ramage was going to do, and he was telling the admiral, not suggesting (when he would have used the word "proposing"). "We can anchor off the north side if it grows too rough here. No one suspects our identity: to the garrison we are a French frigate . . ."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It wanted an hour to sunset when Ramage stood at the fore end of the quarterdeck with Aitken, Hill and Orsini. By now the wind was much stronger, with the ship pitching heavily in the swell which had come up from the south, sliding in under the wind waves. Each time the Calypso snubbed at her anchor cable she groaned as if in protest. Each jerk was felt through the whole ship: deck beams moved a fraction of an inch, bending to absorb the weight of the guns on the maindeck: each gun and its carriage meant a couple of tons pressing down on the deck planking at four points, where the four wooden wheels, or trucks, rested.

  The pitching of the hull jerked the masts back and forth a distance almost imperceptible to the untrained eye but increased by the weight of the yards and the sails furled on them. However, the thick hemp rope of t
he standing rigging stretched naturally, giving the masts a certain amount of play. The movement of the hull and of the masts, as Paolo Orsini had learned during the first few days after joining the ship (a wide-eyed and very nervous "Johnny Newcome"), was what gave the Calypso her strength. Southwick had explained it to him quite simply: you could bend a bundle of thin sticks across your knee without breaking them, but a solid stick of the same diameter would snap.

  As Paolo now watched the rigging slackening and tautening he remembered Southwick's words, and although he had sailed thousands of miles since then, he was still grateful for the old master's quiet explanation: coming when it did, it meant that a young lad yet to make his first voyage as a midshipman was never again frightened by the creaks and groans of a ship working in a seaway.

  "We'll move round to the north side of the island and find a lee," Ramage told Aitken. "There's no point in waiting, and I don't want to start feeling my way round in the dark. Man the capstan, and let's have the fiddler play a few tunes: with this sea the men will need some forebitters when they set their chests to the capstan bars."

  Southwick bustled up. His station was on the fo'c'sle when weighing anchor, where he could see how the cable was growing (the indication of where the anchor was lying on the sea bottom, in relation to the ship). Skilful use of topsails and the rudder meant that the ship could sail up until she was almost over the anchor, thus taking much of the weight off the cable and so making it easier for the men at the capstan, who would otherwise be hauling the ship bodily ahead.

  Many captains, the master recalled, did not bother to help the men, taking the view that a seaman was a seaman, and straining at a capstan bar was part of the job.

  As Southwick made his way forward to the fo'c'sle, the boatswain's mates were busy with their calls, the shrill, twittering notes interspersed with orders sending men running forward while the topmen, the most agile seamen in the ship, went to the shrouds, awaiting the orders which would send them aloft and out along the yards ready to untie the gaskets holding the sails tightly furled so that at the shouted words "Let fall" the canvas would drop like blinds.

  Ramage looked up at Castello with his telescope. "Nothing," he commented to Aitken. "No one on the battlements. Still having their siesta, I expect. No hostages to guard ... sleep, eat, play cards and read the Moniteur. I wonder how many of them can actually read?"

  "About the same, percentage as our seamen, I expect," Aitken said. "A few minutes' listening to someone reading from the Moniteur can't be much of an incentive to the illiterate dullards to take lessons!"

  By now the men on the quarterdeck had removed the small wedge-shaped drawers which fitted into the slots round the circular top of the capstan, and which held bandages if the ship was frequently in action, or cloths for polishing brass if she was in port for any length of time. The men were now sliding the long capstan bars into the slots so that they radiated out like the spokes of the wheel of a haywain, but horizontal and at the height of a man's chest. As the last bar slid into place a boatswain's mate took a line and with it clovehitched each end to the next, as though adding the rim of the wheel to the spokes. This swifter, as it was called, made sure that none of the bars accidentally came out (an accident which could happen easily enough, without the swifter) should the men at one bar lose their footing.

  Hellfire, Ramage thought to himself, the wind is coming up quickly: had it been out of a clear sky and brief, it would be called a colpo di vento, but as it is there is no doubt the captain of the Calypso has left weighing anchor so late that he is risking having to cut and run. Cutting and running to escape an enemy was all right, but telling the Board that one had to cut a cable and lose an anchor because of bad weather would bring down their wrath: not so much because of the value of the lost cable and anchor but because it revealed poor judgement and worse seamanship.

  Ramage glanced at the distant stone wall partly enclosing the port, and then at the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs. "Use the topsails to get the strain off the cable as soon as you can - but you haven't much room to tack."

  Aitken nodded and gave Hill an order. In a way it was amusing, Ramage thought: he was going to walk a few feet away apparently to watch the men at work at the capstan and then join Southwick, but actually he was giving Aitken the chance of handling the ship alone under what were difficult conditions. The only way Aitken would ever be absolutely confident was knowing that he could not make mistakes because the captain was not within earshot, ready to take command again. And now in turn Aitken was trying out Hill because this was the first time that the new third lieutenant had sailed with Aitken.

  Ramage found the fiddler hurriedly tuning his fiddle. "Hurry up," he said, "it'll be blowing a hurricane and we'll part the cable before you've hove a strain on that blasted catgut!"

  Finally Ramage said: "Come on, better flat forebitters than no forebitters at all: up on the capstan you go!"

  The man grinned, revealing three or four yellow teeth and, ducking under the swifter, squeezed past two men standing ready to start pushing on their bar and scrambled up on to the top of the capstan.

  The Calypso's bow was now rising and falling a good fifteen feet as the swell waves swept in, lifting high on the crests and plunging so quickly into the troughs that Ramage knew the men there would be feeling almost weightless, hard put to stand still because as the bow dropped they would be almost forced to trot a step or two.

  The fiddler stood facing outboard, his knees flexing and tensing to keep his balance. He sawed once at the fiddle and then waved the bow confidently at Ramage, who promptly ordered: "Start heaving, my lads!"

  As Ramage recognized the familiar tune of one of the men's favourite forebitters, the foretopsail was let fall, the canvas flogging and almost drowning out the fiddle and the groaning of the capstan, until the yard was hoisted. Then the yard creaked as men hauled on the braces to trim it and the canvas stopped flogging as others heaved on the sheets.

  "On Friday morning as we set sail . . ." the capstan men roared, pressing against the bars, each of the pawls clunking as it fell back into its slot in the barrel, preventing a sudden jerk overwhelming the men and spinning the capstan in reverse.

  Further aft yet another sail began to slat, and now Ramage could hear the fiddle giving the tune, and the men bellowed the second line.

  "It was not far from land . . ."

  Ramage heard rather than saw the maintopsail being braced round almost overhead, the sail sheeted home and beginning to draw. Below decks forward, in the cable locker, men would be dragging the cable - as thick as a man's thigh - and coiling it down in a great circle, each ring smaller than the previous one. The nippers would be running back and forth smartly as the capstan turned the long, endless rope, the messenger, which first went round an identical drum beneath the capstan, then led two-thirds the length of the ship and round the voyol block secured right up in the bow (an enormous pulley) and finally back aft to the capstan extension.

  The anchor cable itself never went round the capstan barrel extension on the deck below, midway between the mizen and mainmasts; instead it was briefly seized to the messenger by the boys using short lengths of line to nip it - hence their nickname, nippers - so that the cable was hauled along by the messenger until it reached the hatch over the cable locker, into which it slithered like an enormous serpent returning to its lair, the boys hurriedly unhitching their lines at the last moment and running forward to nip the cable again.

  "Oh, there I spy'd a fair pretty maid..."

  Now the men at the capstan bars were finding it easier as the frigate slowly beat up towards the anchor, one short leg before tacking, and then coming round on the other. The capstan swung fast on each leg but the men were slowed down, grunting with effort, each time the Calypso tacked and briefly the weight came back on the cable.

  "With a comb and a glass in her hand . . ."

  Ramage found himself beginning to hum the chorus.

  "The stormy winds did blow,r />
  And the raging seas did roar ..."

  Ramage went forward to the fo'c'sle to join Southwick, who strode to the bow and looked down at the cable. He came back to report to Ramage: "At short stay, sir."

  Ramage nodded: the anchor cable was now leading down into the water at the same angle as the forestay. The anchor was still holding, and Southwick signalled to Aitken, who was still standing on the quarterdeck near the capstan, speaking trumpet in his hand.

  " While we poor sailors went to the top,

  And the landlubbers laid below . . ."

  It always surprised Ramage that men straining at the capstan bars with every ounce of strength, veins standing out like cords on their arms and necks, could spare breath for the words, but they could and seemed to gain strength, the capstan's revolutions speeding and slowing in accord with the singing and the tacking.

  "Then up spoke a boy of our gallant ship,

  And a well speaking boy was he . . ."

  Southwick walked forward again and looked down at the cable. The Calypso swung once more as Aitken tacked her, and the capstan slowed down while the ship wheeled yet again on the cable, like a dog straining at its leash.

  "I've a father and mother in Portsmouth town,

  And this night they weep for me . . ."

  Southwick came back. "Up and down, sir; we're swinging on it," he reported as he waved to Aitken. The next few minutes - almost moments - were going to be critical: with the cable now vertical, Aitken had to time the Calypso's moves so that she was tacking offshore at the moment the anchor lifted off the bottom.

  "Then up spake a man of our gallant ship,