by Dudley Pope
"Certainly these place names'd be easier to remember if I knew what they meant," Southwick admitted. He took off his hat and scratched his head. "I'm surprised we haven't come across other frigates or 74s joining the fleet."
"I think most of 'em are already out here," Ramage said. "Those two 74s in Chatham won't be ready for sea for another couple of months. We're probably the last to join His Lordship - except perhaps for the two frigates we saw off the Isle of Wight."
By now Orsini, a tiny figure perched at the masthead, was shouting down to the quarterdeck with his hail being repeated by the lookout. Southwick held the mouthpiece of the speaking trumpet to his ear.
He nodded to himself, gave a satisfied smile and then, turning the trumpet so he could talk into the mouthpiece, shouted back: "Very well, keep a sharp lookout for Medina Sidonia!"
The master turned to Ramage. "He's certain about 'The Moor' and Aljibe, and thinks he's sighted a sail in line with where Cadiz should be."
He thought a moment and then asked Ramage: "What's 'Aljibe' mean, then?"
"'Aljibe' is a cistern or water catchment, and 'Pico' means 'Peak'."
"Your Spanish must be good sir; I keep forgetting that. I remember that time you were in Cartagena, pretending to be a Spaniard."
"Yes, I can pass myself off as a Castilian, but some of the local accents are hard to understand. A fast-talking Galician from the north, or an excited yokel from Murcia - the province of Cartagena - can leave me baffled."
The two men talked for half an hour, reminiscing over past actions ranging from Italy to southern France and on to Spain before crossing the Atlantic to the West Indies and the coasts of the Spanish Main.
"India," Southwick said, "now there's a country I've never been to. Can't say I've any great wish in that direction," he admitted.
"My wife loved it - her father was Governor of Bengal, as you know. She says the variety is fantastic: plains wider than you could ever imagine; great mountains: the cool hill stations to which everyone retreats in the hot season . . . Imagine a country so large you could drop in England and lose it!"
At that moment Orsini hailed again. Southwick listened with the makeshift ear trumpet and reported to Ramage: "He says it's definitely Medina Sidonia fine on the starboard bow and he can make out land below it. We must be about fifteen miles off."
"Near enough to Cadiz to sight some of the fleet soon. Tell him to watch for any sail. What happened to that ship he sighted?"
"He can't see her any longer: reckons she must have been steering south."
"Very well, tell him to instruct the lookout and then come down. There are a score of ships of the line off Cadiz: just our luck not to sight one. Still, our frigates will be off Cadiz . . ."
As the Calypso bore up for the fleet, pendant numbers flying, Ramage had the feeling he was walking into a forest. More than twenty ships of the line meant more than sixty great masts, and in the middle of them was the Victory. Then, with almost startling suddenness, he was tacking through the fleet - under the Revenge's stern, across the Colossus's bow, watch out for the Ajax because she's fore-reaching on you . . . What the devil is the Orion doing, is no one keeping a lookout? . . . Why the devil does the Bellerophon have to choose this minute to tack - no wonder she's always known as the "Billy Ruffian" - and now the blasted Polyphemus ("Polly Infamous" to the sailors) is heaving-to just as I was intending to go under her transom . . . now the damned Mars looks as though she is determined on a collision . . . Oh, the devil take it, who but a madman would prefer serving with a fleet to being independent?
"Are you watching for flagship signals?" Ramage snapped at Orsini, and a moment later bellowed to Kenton to stand by to rig the staytackle ready to hoist out a boat.
"Is the gunner standing by ready with the salute?" Ramage asked.
This was not the time to hazard a guess, Southwick knew; ships were flashing by like the pictures on those new magic lanterns, and Aitken's voice was already hoarse from shouting helm and sail orders.
Jackson, acting quartermaster and with four men at the wheel so there should be no delay, had long since given up watching the ships as the Calypso weaved among them. He thought momentarily of the jinking snipe they had seen coming down the Medway, and then returned to watching the luffs of sails, making sure that the Calypso kept moving fast: all would be lost, he knew only too well, if she was caught in stays and dropped on board one of the 74s.
Ramage was thinking the same thing: for a moment he imagined a snatch of gossip at the Green Room in Plymouth, with one post-captain asking another: "Hear how that fellow Ramage joined Lord Nelson off Cadiz? Why, drifted into the Victory and boarded her in the smoke, haw, haw!"
And with nine 74s passed, one or two by the thickness of a coat of paint (or so it appeared from the Calypso: the ships were apparently unworried), the Victory still seemed to be as far away through the mass of hulls and masts.
"Bear up," he snapped at Aitken: "We can just scrape across the bow of the Belleisle without carrying away her jibboom."
"If you say so, sir," Aitken said doubtfully, bellowing into his speaking trumpet and snapping a helm order to Jackson.
Topsail sheets and yards braced sharp up, men hauled at the headsail sheets to flatten the curve of jibs and staysails; the Calypso seemed to stagger for a few moments and then pointed even higher into the wind: just enough, Aitken realized, to get clear: but beyond the jibboom loomed yet another 74, black-hulled with white strakes - the Conqueror?Aitken was guessing, but there seemed no way the Calypso could turn to larboard or starboard, luff up or bear away to avoid ramming her amidships.
Aitken glanced at the captain. He was startled to see that Ramage seemed to be enjoying himself: his teeth were bared in a wide grin; his hands were clasped behind his back. For a moment Aitken imagined a confident gambler watching the dice roll the way he wanted.
"Back the maintopsail, Mr Aitken!"
And stop the ship? Aitken shouted the orders which brought the men sweating and cursing at the braces, hauling the topsail yard round, and then the sheets were trimmed. The Calypso suddenly stopped, the pitching and rolling ceased; instead she just heeled slightly under the press of the backed sail.
And an unbelieving Aitken watched the Conqueror draw ahead: instead of the Calypso's jibboom lancing the 74's foremast shrouds, Aitken saw the Conqueror slide to larboard until her mainshrouds were ahead, then her mizen and finally her transom slid across the frigate's bow leaving - Aitken almost whooped with relief and joy - an empty space, then one three-decker beyond her, the centre of a spacious area, the Victory, her three yellow strakes glistening, with another three-decker, the Dreadnought, in her wake.
Aitken glanced again at Ramage and saw the satisfied grin on his face - the captain had calculated that manoeuvre down to the last few feet - and the first lieutenant was ready with the speaking trumpet when Ramage said: "Very well, let it draw!"
It took only moments to brace the yard and trim the sheets so that the maintopsail filled with wind and the Calypso began hissing through the water again with an easy pitch and roll - like, Aitken thought, a young man strolling carefree through the park on a spring morning.
Still no signal from the Victory. But the three-decker ahead was Admiral Collingwood's temporary flagship, the Dreadnought (the Royal Sovereign had yet to arrive from England), and admirals did not like frigates bolting across their bow.
"Bear away and pass under the Dreadnought's stern," Ramage said, "and then bear up on the Victory's larboard side."
It was a long way from Clarges Street, Ramage thought, and Lord Nelson was probably missing Lady Hamilton as much as he was missing Sarah. Supposing one was bound for India, two years from home and probably more than that: did the pain lessen? It could not get worse; he was damned sure of that.
Now they were past the Dreadnought and running up on the Victory's quarter. She was towing a single cutter. Quickly Ramage lifted his telescope and swept the Dreadnought's deck. Yes, her cutter was missi
ng. Lord Nelson's second-in-command was on board the Victory.
What was Admiral Collingwood really like? Ramage had never met him but had heard many stories. For a start, Collingwood was rarely separated from his dog Bunce. He was a Northumberland man who loved the country and was so worried about the rate at which England was using up her oak trees to build ships of war that when he was out walking in the country he had a pocketful of acorns, which he planted in likely places, to ensure that in a hundred years' time, in 1905, England would not lack for oaks. What else about him? He was a strict but very fair disciplinarian who hated flogging - he was reputed to have said that flogging made a good man bad, and a bad man worse. A quiet and reserved man, the complete opposite of Lord Nelson, who by contrast was like a bowl of quicksilver. But apparently both men knew each other well, and worked together.
"Start the salute," Ramage told Aitken.
A minute later number one gun on the larboard side gave a snuffling thud, and Ramage pictured the gunner timing the five-second firing intervals with the time-honoured phrase, "If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here, number two gun fire ... If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here, number three gun fire . . ." He found himself repeating it, and the gunner seemed to be timing it correctly. A captain joining the fleet, to his commander-in-chief, seventeen guns. If the gunner had any sense he had seventeen musket or pistol balls in a pocket, transferring one to another pocket every time a gun fired, until the first pocket was empty: that was the only safe way of not firing sixteen or eighteen.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen: that was the end of the salute. And a flutter of flags from the Victory. Ramage read the Calypso's three pendant numbers, followed by numbers 103.
"Signal from the flagship, sir," Orsini called excitedly. "Our pendant and then 103, 'Keep in the Admiral's wake'."
Which, given the limitations of the four hundred orders in the signal book, was the only way to order the Calypso to take up a position astern of the Victory. (There was no signal which could order the Calypso to take up a position ahead or on either beam . . .)
"See to it, Mr Aitken," Ramage said, knowing the first lieutenant had heard Orsini's report. "One cable astern of the Dreadnought."
A simple enough manoeuvre, but this time executed within yards of Admiral Collingwood's flagship, and several telescopes would be scanning the new arrival, eager to spot poor or dilatory seamanship. Thus, Ramage reflected ruefully, could a captain's reputation be sported away, no matter how many successful actions he had fought. Flag lieutenants and all the rest of the people serving an admiral (from clerks to a chaplain and a host of midshipmen) were like a medieval king's courtiers: they had little else to do but scratch each other's backs and gossip . . .
Ramage made a point of standing four-square on the quarterdeck, obviously leaving the handling of the ship to his first lieutenant - not to avoid responsibility but to show any prying eyes that the Calypso's captain had complete faith in his officers. Obviously Lord Nelson (and almost certainly Admiral Collingwood) were above all the gossip, but the other ships in the fleet liked to hear it, especially if about a well-known captain making a fool of himself. And, Ramage reflected, he was just well enough known by now to be a target . . .
An hour later Martin, as officer of the deck, reported to Ramage that the Victory and the Dreadnought had backed their maintopsails.
"If we don't do something, we'll be aboard the Dreadnought," Ramage said. "Admiral Collingwood may well be put out if Lieutenant Martin puts the Calypso's jibboom through the sternlights of his great cabin ..."
Martin grinned because the lieutenants enjoyed being teased by the captain. He lifted the speaking trumpet, which he had picked up the moment he saw the Victory's maintopsail start to shiver, and bellowed the orders for the Calypso to follow suit.
Southwick lumbered on deck, saw what was happening and asked Ramage: "What's His Lordship doing?"
"Letting Admiral Collingwood return to his ship, from the look of it." He steadied the telescope. "Yes, I can see men hauling round the painter of that cutter. And there are two admirals walking the quarterdeck."
"That's our excitement for the day," Martin muttered. "Unless the cutter capsizes and we can rescue the admiral from drowning."
When Orsini laughed, Ramage said: "That reminds me: why was there such a delay in answering the Victory's signal to us?"
"The answering pendant wasn't bent on the halyard, sir," Orsini admitted lamely.
"If you want to live long enough to go up to Somerset House and take your examination for lieutenant, let me give you some advice," Ramage said. "When you're near a senior officer's ship, always keep an answering pendant bent on the halyard ready. And remember - in most fleets it matters less that a ship's gunnery is poor than that she answers signals quickly. Not with Lord Nelson, but with most senior officers."
"Yes, sir," Orsini said apologetically. "I had realized that - too late - but we have the pendant bent on now."
Ramage nodded. "Good - that's the first lesson you've learned about joining a fleet. There'll be more. Just remember that when you're in company with a flagship, you're standing at the wrong end of someone's telescope . . ."
CHAPTER NINE
Ramage was in his cabin, his sword, best frock-coat and hat on the settee, when Aitken hailed through the skylight: "Sir, signal from the flagship . . . two . . . one . . . three. Orsini is looking it up ... Yes, 'The captains of the fleet, or of the ships pointed out, are to come to the Admiral'. Shall I hoist out the cutter, sir?"
"Yes, and tell Jackson to assemble my boat's crew. And have 'em tidy themselves up: some of those captains of 74s dress up their boats' crews like puppets."
The captain of the Harlequin frigate, for instance: he was a wealthy man and dressed his men as harlequins. Ramage thought of some of the more unusual names in the list of the Navy: the Alligator, a 28-gun frigate, the Beaver, Bittern and Badger, Bouncer, Boxer, Biter and Bruiser.
He imagined men in shirts with stripes down their backs.
"What ship?"
"The Badger, sir."
He stood up and looked down at himself. Yes, shoes polished and the gold buckles fitted; silk stockings unmarked - he had remembered not to cross his feet: Silkin never managed to get all the polish off his boots or shoes, so the back of his stockings usually suffered. Breeches - not creased. He was just going to pick up his frock-coat when Silkin hurried in.
"Thank goodness I fitted those gold buckles, sir," the man said. "The silver ones would never have done for seeing the admiral."
"Rubbish," Ramage said curtly, "admirals wouldn't notice if their captains arrived barefoot!"
"Oh sir!" Silkin exclaimed, as if he knew that Ramage was quite capable of arriving on board a flagship like that, to the eternal shame of his servant.
He held up the frock-coat and Ramage eased himself into it. The price of a good tailor was being uncomfortable: he wanted your frock-coat to fit like a glove, and breeches were so tight that sitting down suddenly was dangerous.
"You're not taking the presentation sword, sir?"
"No."
"It's a fine sword, sir."
"And it has 'Lloyd's' written all over it."
Silkin shook his head, puzzled.
It will be interesting, Ramage thought sourly, to see which of those captains with presentation swords actually wear them to meet Lord Nelson. It was like wearing a label, he thought, saying "I'm brave, sir."
Ramage looked at his watch. In half an hour there would be so many boats with impatient captains milling about at the foot of the Victory'sentryport that a wise man either arrived very early or very late, thus avoiding the scramble. The Calypso was the nearest vessel now the Dreadnought had returned to her station. Arrive early, Ramage decided.
Just fifteen minutes later Jackson laid the Calypso's cutter below the Victory's entryport and, after a quick hitch at his sword belt, Ramage seized the sideropes being held out clear of the hull by the sideboys and began the long scramble up the ba
ttens to reach the port itself.
Conscious that the whole port was neatly painted, the scroll work picked out in gold leaf, Ramage entered, to be met by a large man wearing epaulets on both shoulders - a captain with more than three years' seniority.
The man held out his right hand. "I'm Hardy - you must be Ramage. His Lordship hoped you'd take advantage of your nearness and get here first."
"I've been chasing you for days," Ramage said. "I was hoping we'd get to St Helens before you sailed."
Hardy grinned amiably. "I'll let you into a secret: we only just beat you: we joined the fleet last night - you probably saw Admiral Collingwood reporting on board. Oh yes, by the way, today's His Lordship's birthday. He's forty-seven."
Ramage nodded gratefully and followed Hardy's directions up to the great cabin. That entryport, Ramage thought, told him a good deal about Hardy: only one lieutenant, the master at arms and two seamen were waiting there; the sideropes were scrubbed white, even though the Victory had been at sea for days, and every bit of brasswork in sight was gleaming. Nor was Hardy a scrub-and-polish captain; by reputation he was a fighter.
Ramage was met at the door of the main cabin by a man dressed in a dark-green suit, with spectacles and a slight stoop. "I'm Scott, His Lordship's chaplain. Allow me to announce you - the name?"
"Ramage."
"Ah," the man exclaimed, "you just joined the fleet in the Calypso. One of our famous young frigate captains! His Lordship was telling me that he saw you in London. Well, please follow me."
Nelson was sitting in a curiously shaped armchair close by the sternlights, reading a document. As soon as he heard Scott and looked up he gave an exclamation of pleasure, folded the document with one hand and slid it into a wide pocket sewn into the side of the chair like a large poacher's pocket. As he stood up, Ramage saw that the chair was very narrow and deep, obviously specially made for the admiral: dark-green leather, high back, and the curious pockets on each side.
