The Ramage Touch r-10

by Dudley Pope

  Southwick had seen them and slapped his knee. "They're on time, too! Those two lads probably used this stretch here to waste a little time so they weren't too early."

  Aitken came up to Ramage, squinting in the bright sunlight. "I can't get used to those colours, sir," he said, gesturing up at the Tricolour. Then, when he saw that Southwick and Ramage were watching the two bomb ketches anchoring, he grinned and took out his watch. "Two minutes early. Who knows, the four of them might become admirals yet!"

  He then glanced questioningly at Ramage, who nodded. "Yes, general quarters, but leave the port lids down; don't forget we're a French frigate just paying a routine visit - probably to get fresh water. Our own colours are also bent on? Ah, I see you have them there already," he said as he saw a carefully folded bundle of coloured cloth secured to a halyard and made up to a cleat.

  The bosun's mates went through the ship, their calls shrill as they shouted to the men to go to quarters, and Ramage was thankful he had a well-trained ship's company. Normally there was one lieutenant to each division of guns, and when the Calypso was fighting one side - half her guns - this meant three lieutenants and a midshipman to supervise eighteen guns. Now all the broadside guns would be handled only by their captains, who were chosen because they were steady able seamen. They were going to have to be careful that in the excitement a gun was not accidentally loaded with two charges of powder. This was the most frequent reason for a gun blowing up.

  He could not spare Southwick to keep an eye on the guns - an impossible task for one man anyway - and Aitken would have to take over command of the ship at a moment's notice if a roundshot removed the Captain's head. Still, the three lieutenants and midshipman would be doing more than their share in the bomb ketches, and he was far from clear what the Calypso would have to do, if anything. Although the bomb ketches had set roles to play, the Calypso was little more than a terrier lurking round to see which way an escaping rat would bolt.

  Southwick was again looking at his watch, at a sheet of paper which Ramage recognized as the timetable he had written out for the Calypso, and then picking up his quadrant and, holding it horizontally, looking over at Isolotto and adjusting the vernier screw. Then he examined the angle shown, the horizontal angle made by each end of Isolotto. Again he consulted a piece of paper and nodded to himself, obviously satisfied at the distance it revealed. Ramage managed to restrain himself from asking the old master if they would arrive on time; if they would not, then Southwick would be doing something about it - requesting topgallants to be set if they were late, asking for permission to clew up the maintopsail if they were too early.

  The slowly increasing tension was making Ramage look for faults, and he realized that any minute now he would start asking Aitken quite unnecessary questions - was this all right, had he forgotten that, what about the other? He leaned against the quarterdeck rail, in defiance of his own rule that no one ever rested his elbows on its capping, and told himself that it helped steady the telescope. It did, of course, but there was no earthly reason why he should be squinting through the glass; he had already examined the coast, and they had not gone far enough to make any appreciable difference to the appearance of the walls and embrasures at La Rocca. The hills on the south side of the harbour were, from this angle, too high for him to be able to glimpse the masts of the frigates - supposing they were still there.

  He felt perspiration soaking into the band of his hat at the sudden thought that they might have left, and used the back of his hand to wipe some away from his upper lip.The three frigates could have sailed during the night. They might not have gone into Porto Ercole. Don't be such a damned fool, he told himself, you saw them there yesterday as you walked along the Feniglia. But they could have sailed at sunset, after he and his motley quartet had punted across the lagoon. But why should they? They could not have embarked the troops in that time. Supposing they had brought, or received, new orders, to leave the troops there and go on to join this fleet, wherever it was?

  He felt himself flushing with annoyance and embarrassment together, angry both for his nervousness and his stupidity: the two bomb ketches had anchored in what seemed to be the exact spot and at the exact time. He had not put anything in his orders to cover the fact that the frigates might not be there because it had never occurred to him, but Wagstaffe had initiative. If the harbour was empty he would never have anchored the Brutus, and Kenton would certainly not have disobeyed any order from Wagstaffe. Anyway the Calypso's second lieutenant knew that the frigate was close, and in an emergency he would have turned back to report.

  So, Ramage told himself angrily, all is well: stop fretting. The ship's company always boast about how calm you are going into action (which only proves what a good actor you are), so try to live up to your reputation. If battle is an opera, then the orchestra is now just beginning to tune up for the overture, with some of the players still arriving late with their instruments.

  Instruments reminded him of Martin and his flute. The lad was likely to have been giving the Brutus's men a tune or two as they sailed round Argentario. How did "Heart of Oak" sound on a flute? The men would love some of the more popular tunes like "Black-eyed Susan", because they seized any opportunity to dance. He must encourage Martin to play more often, especially in these long summer evenings, so that the men could dance. They were bored with John Harris's fiddle; the man had a complete repertory of about a dozen tunes, at least four of which were fore-bitters, played when the capstan was being worked. Always supposing, he thought with a touch of bitterness, that Martin, the Brutus, and the Calypso survive the next couple of hours. Then, ashamed of the dark thoughts that scurried about his mind like a North Sea fog suddenly springing up off the Texel, he hoped that Martin had stowed his flute somewhere safe, so that a French roundshot would not splinter it.

  He glanced up and was startled to find that they would be abreast of Isolotto in a few minutes and La Rocca was just beginning to open up beyond it. He swung the telescope slightly - the muzzles of two or three guns poked through the embrasures, but they did not glisten from blacking recently applied, nor could he see any heads wearing bright shakos beyond them or behind the wall. There were just goats this side of the wall, scrambling nimbly along the rocky face of the cliff - goats which would run away if there was sudden human activity. He walked back to the binnacle and glanced down at the compass, up at the luffs of the sails and then across at the nearest dogvane.

  The wind was steady from the north-north-west and the Calypso was slipping along easily on a heading of north-east, which would take her a hundred yards or so to the east of the anchored bomb ketches. He found Southwick looking at him, a satisfied grin on his face. The master gave a cheery wink. "On course and on time, sir."

  "Luck or judgment?" Ramage inquired innocently.

  "Best not inquire too closely, sir," Southwick said modestly. "But as best as I can make out, the lads have anchored those two bombs perfectly, and because no one is firing at them, I presume no one in the Port of Hercules is at all suspicious."

  Ramage could not resist looking at his watch yet again. Twenty minutes to go. In that time the Calypso would stretch across in front of Porto Ercole as though heading for the Feniglia, passing close to the sterns of the bomb ketches, which by then should have springs on their anchor cables so that they could turn to the precise degree necessary to train the mortars. As soon as the leadsman was reporting six fathoms and shallowing as they approached the Feniglia, the Calypso would either wear round and make for the harbour entrance, or heave-to, keeping up to windward of Porto Ercole, ready to pounce. It all depended on the guns of Monte Filippo and Santa Catarina, the three frigates, the two bomb ketches, and the chart. There might be a rock or two, even a shoal, to the north-east of the harbour, where no ship would normally sail but where the Calypso now had to go to get up to windward, but it was not marked on the chart. Nor would anyone expect it to be marked there, although the fishermen would know all about it. The Secca Santa Catarin
a was shown, a shoal just off the north-east end of the harbour entrance, and the chart said it had a least depth of twenty-one feet over it. No threat to the Calypso, whose maximum draught at present was just sixteen feet.

  Suddenly he could see into the harbour entrance and there, like three plump black crows perched on a bough, were the three frigates. They were just as he had expected: each had two anchors out ahead and their sterns appeared to be secured to the quay. The telescope showed clearly that tucked between them, on each side of the middle frigate, was some kind of raft, so that the guns and horses could be run down from the quay on to a raft and then hauled forward to be hoisted by a yard tackle. In fact the northernmost frigate was hoisting a gun carriage at this very moment. The gun had been removed - probably hoisted a few minutes ago - and now the carriage was following.

  No signal flags were flying, so obviously the senior officer of the three frigates was waiting to see who commanded the Calypso before giving any orders - the Calypso's captain might be the senior of them all. Not only that, Ramage thought maliciously, but they do not have the faintest idea of the name of the frigate anyway because we are not flying her pendant numbers. Nor, for that matter, was any of the three anchored frigates. There were no signal flags hoisted anywhere, and no boats making for the bomb ketches to ask the sort of questions that could give the whole game away . . .

  Southwick tapped his arm and Ramage saw the master pointing at a faintly brownish-green patch in the water over on the larboard bow. 'That'll be the shoal, sir, Santa Catarina. Won't interfere with us . . ."

  By now the leadsman standing in the forechains was beginning to chant the depth as he heaved the lead, hoisting it with the water streaming down his leather apron, reading off the marks and coiling the line again. Four fathoms . . . five fathoms ... six fathoms . . . five fathoms . . . Ramage watched the chart with Southwick and noted that the shape of the sea bottom being revealed by the leadsman's shouts was corresponding to the soundings on the chart. The pines lining the Feniglia were now beginning to stand out as individual trees rather than a dark green band at the back of a strip of golden sand which was almost blinding in the bright sun. Through the gap formed by the next bay, peaks showed up like the leaves of an artichoke. Five fathoms ... six fathoms. Ramage ignored the "and a half" and "and a quarter" or "and a quarter less"; he was not interested in anything less than a whole fathom; the Calypso was merely getting into a good position, not trying to find her way through a difficult channel. Five fathoms . . . four fathoms ... He glanced back to Porto Ercole, now over on the frigate's larboard quarter, and at the two bomb ketches, and then he looked at Aitken and nodded. The first lieutenant put the speaking trumpet to his lips and shouted the first of the orders that would wear round the frigate so that she would be steering back almost along the reciprocal of the course that had brought her some three thousand yards off Porto Ercole.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paolo was angry because his hand trembled as he held the quadrant. It was a one-handed job with the quadrant already set at a particular angle, and all he had to do was to watch the centre of the three French frigates and warn Kenton when the mainmasthead made the correct angle. Finally he used his left hand as well, not to stop the slight tremor of the right - the left did not help because it too was shaking - but because he did not want to make any mistakes. Both the Captain and Kenton had been emphatic that the angle must be correct within a few seconds of arc; any error would mean that the frigates were nearer or farther away, and that could be disastrous.

  He would not have been so cross with himself if his hands were trembling because he was frightened - he was not; it was simply that he was excited. Who would not be excited in this situation? Here were a couple of captured French bomb ketches, once again French according to their colours, just nosing up to an enemy harbour under a flying jib and mizen, making perhaps a knot . . . Captain Ramage had been very emphatic in saying that it must all look quite normal, as though the two bomb ketches were just anchoring normally off the harbour, and the senior of the two commanding officers would be coming in as soon as his ship was properly anchored, ready to report to the senior of the frigate captains and receive any new orders that might be waiting for him. The ketches must not waste time and fiddle about so that the French had any idea that they were in fact anchoring exactly 2,000 yards from the frigates . . .

  Kenton was watching him, speaking trumpet in his hand; Jackson, too, standing forward ready to let the anchor run, was watching him. Everyone seemed to be watching him. Guiltily Paolo took a hurried look through the quadrant eyepiece. He saw thankfully, after being frightened for a moment that his inattention had taken the Fructidor too far in, that the frigate's masthead in the mirror was not level with the waterline that he could see through the plain part of the glass. Almost, but not quite.

  "How far, do you reckon?"

  Kenton's voice was harsh. It was hard to guess. He had not heard the Brutus's sails flapping as she luffed up to let go the anchor, and he could just see her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly fixed on the starboard beam not a hundred yards away.

  "About a cable, I reckon, sir."

  Two hundred yards . . . how the devil was he expected to translate in his head a few seconds of arc measured by the quadrant into yards along the surface of the sea? That was for people like Southwick, who could work out mathematical problems in the same way that a child's ball goes down a staircase - it starts at the top and bounces down, step by step, until it reaches the bottom and stops. And that, ecco, is the answer . . . Southwick made it all seem very logical when he was explaining it, but the minute he stopped explaining and asked for an explanation, the ball seemed to want to bounce upwards, or miss three steps . . .

  "A hundred yards to go, sir," Paolo said firmly, but realized that in addition to his hands trembling, his knees felt shaky too. He was not frightened, but they should not have given this job to someone who did not understand mathematics. "Twenty-five yards, sir!"

  Everything happened at once: he saw the Brutus turn into the wind, sails napping; Kenton shouted at the helmsman; seamen let halyards go at the run and the flying jib sheets flogged for a moment before the sail began sliding down the stay. Porto Ercole, the frigates and the big fort up on the hill, Filippo, which seemed to be watching them like a crouching animal, suddenly slid to starboard. He turned quickly for a last check – yes, the turn into the wind meant the ketch was still sailing along the 2,000 yard radius from the frigates, so by the time she lost way and the anchor cable began to run, the distance would still be exactly right.

  Accidente, his hands were trembling even more now, and the muscles in his knees seemed to be turning to water, and yet he had made no mistake; he had done exactly what Kenton had told him; the ship would be anchored exactly right. He put the quadrant down on the binnacle box and caught Kenton's eye. The third lieutenant winked, and Paolo saw that he too was holding a quadrant - he had checked at the last moment.

  "Good lad," Kenton said. "Now get forward. I want that spring clapped on the anchor cable as soon as we've veered ten fathoms."

  These French galliots were clumsy things, but one could hardly expect too much; they were little more than heavily built boxes which in peacetime would probably be plying between places like Calais and Havre de Grace with cargoes of potatoes or casks of salt fish; perhaps even carrying stone, from somewhere like Caen, which was needed for building a new breakwater at Boulogne. Stone-blocks, so Rossi said, were a cargo which most seamen dreaded. The great weight for a small bulk meant that masters tended to overload and if the ship sprang a leak it was usually impossible to shift the heavy blocks down in the hold to get at the source to make repairs. After a few hours' threshing to windward with a stone-block cargo, Rossi had said, and his experience had been in carrying marble from Carrara, even the toughest sailor began to imagine that with all the violent pitching the blocks were lifting and dropping on to the hull like an enormous mallet, forcing the planking . . .


  "Yes," he said hurriedly as Jackson reported that ten fathoms of cable had been veered, the anchor was holding, and they were all ready to clap on the spring.

  Paolo looked round at the spring, a heavy rope which came in over the bow but which had been led aft right along the starboard side outside of all the rigging, secured temporarily with lashings to stop it dropping into the water, and coming in over the starboard quarter.

  "Right," he said to Stafford, Rossi and two other seamen, who were waiting at the bow, just beyond the mortar. "Secure the spring. A rolling hitch, of course," he added airily.

  "Of course, sir," Jackson said politely, and Paolo blushed. It had not been necessary to tell them what knot to use, but at least they now knew that he knew, and come to think of it that was about the only reason for saying it.

  The five men seized the spring, a rope of perhaps a quarter of the diameter of the cable, and quickly secured it to the anchor cable with the rolling hitch, Jackson using a length of line to seize the end to the cable. "Always worth doing, sir," he explained to Paolo, "just in case the rolling hitch takes it into its head to slip."

  He turned aft and called to Kenton: "Spring is made up, sir; shall we prepare to veer?"

  "Aye, veer enough to take the strain."

  Paolo turned to give the men the order but Jackson's glance made him pause. The American was staring along the starboard side, obviously trying to warn him about something - the lashing!

  "Cut the lashings . . ." He watched as the men went along the ship's side, slashing at the lines with their knives, so that heavy rope dropped down into the water with a splash.