Ramage

by Pope, Dudley

  And the Barras? Just as Ramage looked out through a gunport the Bosun ran up, but he told him to wait a moment. God, what a terrifying sight she was! Silhouetted against the western horizon, below which the sun had set some ten minutes ago, the great ship seemed like a huge island fortress in the sea, black and menacing, apparently impregnable. And so far as the Sibella is concerned, Ramage thought bitterly, she is impregnable. She was under a maintopsail only and steering parallel with the Sibella about 8oo yards away.

  Ramage glanced across the ship, over the larboard side. Almost abeam and perhaps a couple of miles away was the solid bulk of the Argentario peninsula, a sprawling mass of rock joined to the mainland of Italy by a couple of narrow causeways. Monte Argentario itself, the highest of the peaks, was just abaft the beam. The Barras, ranging up to seaward, had the Sibella neatly trapped, like an assassin with his victim against a wall.

  ‘Well, Bosun…’

  ‘Thank Christ you’re ’ere, sir: I thought you’d gone too. You all right sir? You’re covered in blood.’

  ‘A bang on the head. What’s the position?’

  The Bosun’s face, blackened by smoke from the guns, was striped where runs of perspiration following the wrinkles showed the tanned skin beneath and gave him an almost comical appearance, like a sorrowful bloodhound.

  Obviously making a great effort to keep his voice calm and not forget anything in his report to the new commanding officer, he waved a hand aft. ‘You can see this lot, sir: wheel’s smashed and so’s the tiller and rudder head – can’t rig tackles ’cos the rudder pendents is shot away. Ship’s just about steering herself, with us helping with the sheets and braces. Chain pump’s smashed, so’s the head pumps. The Carpenter’s Mate says there’s four feet o’ water in the well and rising fast. The foremast will go by the board any minute – just look at it. I dunno what’s holding it up. Mainmast is sprung in two places with shot still embedded, and the mizen in three.’

  ‘And the butcher’s bill?’

  ‘About fifty dead and sixty or so wounded, sir. One round of grapeshot did for the Captain and the First Lieutenant. The Surgeon and Purser were–’

  ‘Belay all that: where’s the Carpenter’s Mate? Pass the word for him.’

  While the Bosun turned away, Ramage glanced back at the Barras. Hadn’t she just come round to larboard a little, just a few degrees, so her course was now converging slightly with the Sibella’s? He thought he could see a movement indicating seamen trimming the maintopsail yard round a fraction. Did they want to get even closer?

  The Sibella was sailing at about four knots and yawing through four points. She would steer herself better if the sail aft was reduced, so that the foretopsail pulled her along.

  ‘Bosun! Clew up the main and mizen topsails and set the spritsail.’

  With no sails drawing on main and mizenmasts, the wind would not tend to push the ship’s stern round, and the spritsail, set under the bowsprit, would help the foretopsail, though it was almost too small to help much in such a light wind.

  As the Boson’s shouts set the men to work, Ramage saw the Carpenter’s Mate approaching: he seemed to have smeared more tallow on his body than on the cone-shaped wooden shot plugs which he had been hammering into the holes in the hull.

  ‘Well, make your report.’

  ‘More’n four feet o’ water in the well, no pumps, six or more shot betwixt wind and water, an’ three or more below the waterline – must have hit as she rolled, sir.’

  ‘Very well: sound the well again and report to me at once.’

  Four feet of water. Mathematics was Ramage’s weak point and he tried to concentrate, knowing the Barras’ next broadside was due any moment. Four feet of water: well, the Sibella’s draught is just over fifteen feet, and every seven tons of stores taken on board put her an inch lower in the water. How many tons did that four feet of water swilling about down below represent? What did it matter, anyway, he thought impatiently: what matters is the Carpenter’s Mate’s next report.

  ‘Bosun – have some men cut away the anchors. Tell them to keep their heads down: we don’t want any more casualties.’

  Might as well try to get rid of some weight to compensate for the water flooding in. That would save about five tons in weight – decrease the Sibella’s draught by just over half an inch. It’s almost ludicrous, but it’ll give the men something to do: with so many guns out of action seamen were now wandering around aimlessly, waiting for orders. He could save plenty of weight by heaving damaged guns over the side, but with the few men available it would take too long.

  The Carpenter’s Mate was back. ‘Five feet, sir, and the more she goes down the more shot holes there are being submerged.’

  And, thought Ramage, the deeper the holes the more the pressure of water…

  ‘Can’t you plug them?’

  ‘Most of ’em are too big, sir – all jagged. We could fother a sail over ’em if we got the way off the ship…’

  ‘When did you last sound?’

  ‘Not above quarter of an hour all told, sir.’

  One foot of water in fifteen minutes. If it took about seven tons to put her down an inch, how many for a foot? Twelve inches times seven tons – eighty-four: that meant in fifteen minutes at most eighty-four tons had flooded in. How much more could she take before she sank or capsized? God knows – nothing about that in seamanship manuals. Nor would the Carpenter’s Mate know. Nor the constructors, even if they were within hail. Right, let’s have some action Lieutenant Ramage.

  ‘Carpenter’s Mate – sound the well every five minutes and report to me each time. Get some more men to help plug shot holes – any within a couple of feet of the present water level: stuff in hammocks – anything to slow up the leaks.’

  Ramage walked to the rail at the forward end of the quarter-deck from force of habit, since it was there he had spent much of his seagoing life while on watch.

  Now, he thought: what do we know? The Barras can do what she likes: she’s the cat, we are the mouse. We can’t manoeuvre, but she’s just come round to a slightly converging course. How many degrees? Perhaps twenty. When would the two ships meet?

  More bloody sums, Ramage thought crossly. The Barras was 800 yards away when she altered course. So – take the 800 yards as the base of the triangle, the Barras’ course as the hypotenuse, and the Sibella’s course the opposite side. Question: the length of the opposite side… He could not think of a formula and ended up guessing that the Barras – providing she did not alter her present course again – would finally converge and collide with the Sibella at a point a mile ahead.

  The frigate was making a little over three knots. Three into sixty minutes…they’d meet in twenty minutes: by then it would be almost dark.

  Again red flashes rippling along the Barras’ side; again the thunder. The French are firing raggedly – or, more likely, each gun is being carefully aimed by an officer, since they have no opposition to fear. But none of the shots hit the hull: crashes and the noise of tearing canvas warned him the French were aiming at the masts and spars.

  If he was the Barras’ captain, what would he do? Well, make sure the Sibella is crippled – which is why he’s now firing at the rigging – then run alongside in the last few minutes before darkness, board – and tow the Sibella back to Toulon in triumph. And that, he thought, is just what he is going to do: her captain is timing it beautifully, and he knows that for the last few hundred yards before he gets alongside, we’ll be so close he can call on us to surrender. He’ll know we can’t repel boarders…

  Ramage realized his own position was almost ludicrous: he was in command of a ship which, ghost-like, was sailing herself without a man at the wheel – without a wheel for that matter; but it didn’t matter a damn anyway, because within half an hour he’d have to surrender. Unable to fight, and with the ship full of wounded, he had no alternative.

  And you, Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage, he told himself bitterly, since you’re the son of the discredite
d tenth Earl of Blazey, Admiral of the White, can expect little mercy from the Admiralty if you surrender one of the King’s ships, no matter the reason. The sins – alleged sins, rather – of the father shall be visited on the sons, yea even unto the something or other generation, according to the Bible.

  But looking around the Sibella’s deck, it’s hard to believe in God: that severed trunk with the legs encased in bloody silk stockings and the feet still shod in shoes fitted with elegant silver buckles, is the frigate’s former Captain, and next to it presumably the First Lieutenant, whose days of toadying are finished. Ironic that a man with an ingratiating smile permanently on his face should lose his head. What a shambles: a seaman, naked except for trousers, sprawled over the wreckage of a carronade slide as if in a loving embrace, his hair still bound up in a long queue, a strip of cloth round his forehead to stop perspiration running into his eyes – and his stomach ripped open. Beside him another man who seems unmarked until you realize his arm is cut off at the shoulder–

  ‘Orders, sir?’

  It was the Bosun. Orders – he’d been daydreaming while all these men left alive in the Sibella waited, confident he would perform some miracle and save their lives: save them from ending their days rotting in a French prison. The devil take it: he felt shaky. Ramage made a great effort to think, and at that moment saw the foremast swaying. Presumably it had been swaying for some time, since the Bosun had already wondered why it had not gone by the board. Gone by the board…

  Yes! Why the devil hadn’t he thought of that before: he wanted to cheer: Lieutenant Ramage has woken up: stand by, men: stand by Barras… He felt a sudden elation, as though he was half drunk, and rubbed a scar on his forehead.

  The Bosun looked startled and Ramage realized he must be grinning.

  ‘Right, Bosun,’ he said briskly, ‘let’s get to work. I want every wounded man brought up on deck. It doesn’t matter how bad he is: get him up here on the quarter-deck.’

  ‘But sir–’

  ‘You have five minutes…’

  The Bosun was every day of sixty years old: his hair – what was left of it – was white. And the man knew that bringing the wounded on deck risked them being slaughtered by a broadside from the Barras. Only he hasn’t realized yet, Ramage thought to himself, that now the Barras is firing only at the rigging; she’s stopped sweeping the decks with full broadsides of grapeshot because she knows she’s killed enough men. If she fires into the hull again the wounded below are just as likely to be hit by the ghastly great jagged wood splinters which the shot rip up – he’d seen several pieces more than five feet long.

  Wounded on deck. Now for the boats. Ramage ran aft to the taffrail and peered over: some boats were still towing astern in the Sibella’s wake, having been put over the side out of harm’s way as the ship cleared for action. Two were missing, but the remaining four would serve his purpose. The wounded, the boats – next, food and water.

  By now the Bosun was back.

  ‘We’ll soon be abandoning ship,’ Ramage told him. ‘We must leave the wounded on board. We have four boats. Pick four reliable hands, one to be responsible for each boat. Tell them to take a couple of men – more if they wish – and get sacks of bread and water breakers ready at the aftermost gun ports on the starboard side. A compass for each boat, and a lantern. Make sure each lantern is lit and the boats have oars. Join me here in three minutes. I am going down to the cabin.’

  The Bosun gave him a questioning look before turning away. The ‘cabin’ in a frigate could mean only the Captain’s cabin, and Ramage knew that to mention going below to a man accustomed to seeing armed Marine sentries at every gangway and ladder when in action, to stop people bolting to safety – oh, the devil take him; there isn’t time to explain. How much will the fellow remember when he gives evidence at the court martial that always followed the loss of one of the King’s ships? If they live to face one…

  In the cabin it was dark, and Ramage ducked his head to avoid hitting the beams overhead. He found the Captain’s desk, and was thankful there had been no time to stow the furniture below when the ship cleared for action. Now, he said, deliberately talking aloud to himself to make sure he forgot nothing: first, the Admiral’s orders; second, the Captain’s letter book and order book; third, the Fighting Instructions; lastly – damn, the signal book would be in the hands of one of the midshipmen, and all the midshipmen were dead. Yet above all else the signal book with its secret codes mustn’t fall into French hands.

  He fumbled for the top right-hand drawer – he’d often seen the Captain put his secret papers in there. It was locked – blast, of course it was locked, and he had neither sword nor pistol to force it open. At that moment he saw a light appear behind him, filling the cabin with strange shadows, and as he swung round a nasal voice said: ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  It was the Captain’s cox’n, a cadaverous-faced American named Thomas Jackson, and he was holding a battle lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  ‘Yes, open this drawer.’

  Jackson thrust the pistol in his belt and walked over to one of the cannon on the larboard side of the cabin. The carriage had been smashed by a shot and the barrel lay across the wreckage. In the light of the lantern Ramage was startled to see the bodies of three men – they must have been killed by the shot that dismounted the gun.

  The American came back carrying a bloodstained handspike, the long wooden bar made of ash and tipped with a metal shoe, used to lever round the carriages of the guns when training them.

  ‘If you’d hold the lantern and stand back, sir…’ he said politely.

  He swung the handspike so that the shoe smashed the corner of the desk. Ramage wrenched the drawer open with one hand and gave the lantern to Jackson.

  ‘Hold it up a bit.’

  He pulled the drawer right out. On top of several books and papers was a linen envelope with a broken seal. Ramage opened it and took out a two-page letter, which was headed ‘Secret’ and signed ‘J Jervis’. They were the orders, and he put them back in the envelope and tucked it into his pocket. He glanced at the books, the first of which, labelled ‘Letter Book’, contained copies of all recent official letters received in the Sibella and all those written. The second, labelled ‘Order Book’, contained copies of all orders the Captain had given and received, except, probably, the last one from Admiral Jervis. Next came the Captain’s Log – usually little more than a copy of the one kept by the Master.

  Then there was a sheaf of forms and signed documents – the Admiralty believed the King’s ships could not float without having a vast number of papers on board to give them buoyancy. ‘Cooper’s Affidavit to Leakage of Beer’ – hmm, that concerned the five casks found to be damaged at Gibraltar; ‘Bounty List’, ‘Conduct List’, ‘Account of Paper Expended’… Ramage tore them up. Here was the copy of the Fighting Instructions – it was sufficient to destroy that – and the slim volume containing the Articles of War, the set of laws by which the Navy was governed. They were far from secret; indeed by law had to be read aloud to the ship’s company at least once a month, and the French were welcome to them.

  Apart from the signal book, and some charts, that was all he needed.

  Ramage turned to Jackson. ‘Go to the Master’s cabin and collect all the western Mediterranean charts and sailing instructions you can lay your hands on, and the Master’s log. Bring them to me on the quarter-deck. Put them all in a seabag with a shot in the bottom, in case we have to dump them over the side in a hurry.’

  He noticed a strange quietness beginning to settle over the ship and as he made his way out of the dark cabin, fumbling for the companionway leading to the quarter-deck, he realized wounded men had stopped moaning – or maybe they’d all been taken on deck out of earshot – and he could hear once again the familiar creak of the masts and yards, and the squeak of ropes rendering through blocks. And there was a less familiar noise – the slop of water down in the hold, and strange bumpings: presumably cas
ks of meat, powder and various provisions floating around.

  The ship herself felt sluggish beneath his feet: all the life, the normal quick reaction of the hull to the slightest movement of the rudder, the exhilarating surge forward as an extra strong gust of wind caught the sails, the lively pitch and roll as she rode the crests of the swell waves and plunged across the troughs – all that has gone. Instead, as if she has suffered some ghastly internal haemorrhage, the ton upon ton of water swilling and surging about down below as she rolls is exerting its weight first on one side and then on the other, constantly changing her centres of gravity and buoyancy, and playing fantastic juggling tricks with her stability.

  The Sibella, he thought, shivering involuntarily, is dying, like some great animal lurching through the jungle, mortally wounded and capable of only a few more steps. If a sudden surge of water to one side or the other doesn’t capsize her first, then once the weight of the water pouring in through the ragged shot holes in her hull equals the weight of the ship herself, she will sink. That’s a scientific fact and only pumps, not prayers, can prevent it.

  As Ramage climbed up to the quarter-deck he had a momentary impression of stepping into a cow shed: the stifled moans and gasps of the wounded men sounded like the lowing and snuffling of cattle. The Bosun was carrying out his orders quickly, and the last of the wounded were being brought up: Ramage stepped back a moment to let two limping men drag a third, who appeared to have a broken leg, to join the rest of them lying in rough rows at the forward end of the quarter-deck.