The Ramage Touch r-10

by Dudley Pope

  The Calypso's fourth 12-pounder on the larboard side suddenly spun off its carriage, and a moment later Ramage heard a loud clang and a shriek of pain: a French roundshot had hit and dismounted it.

  By now all the rest of the guns had been reloaded. Steadily each fired its second round at the Furet and Ramage, with nothing to do but await the outcome of the pounding, examined the French ship.

  They were taking their time getting the sails trimmed; so much so that the Calypso was slowly drawing ahead. The Furet seemed to be heeled to larboard - but naturally, she was on the starboard tack. But - now she seemed to be heeled to starboard; in fact she was rolling, and rolling heavily enough to overcome the press of sails to leeward. They were rapidly clewing up the courses - but why reduce speed at a time like this? Now the topgallants were being furled. And the topsails.

  Her gunports seemed to be nearer the water than one would expect, too. Then Ramage turned open-mouthed to Southwick, who was now standing beside him, and both men exclaimed simultaneously: "She's sinking!"

  "Aye, we must have had a lucky shot," Aitken cried jubilantly but Ramage said: "No, they've had the chain pump going for the past ten minutes, but I didn't realize what was happening."

  The Calypso had fired another broadside before Ramage noticed that several seconds had passed since the last French gun had been fired. He told Aitken to pass the order to cease fire.

  "Watch her colours," he told Southwick, and then snapped at Aitken: "Stand by to heave-to and be ready to hoist out boats. Renwick, stand by with your men. I'll be calling away boarding parties in a few minutes."

  He turned to Aitken. "Clew up the courses - use men from the guns if you need 'em because the topgallants will be next."

  There was nothing more dangerous and unnecessary than fighting with too much sail set; topsails were quite enough, giving complete control of the ship, and keeping the canvas high enough above the guns so that the muzzle flash would not start fires. For the first time in his life, he realized, he had been forced to fight under all plain sail. At least, he had stunsails and all plain sail set to the topgallants when he had to fight, because the Furet suddenly bore up ... Now the men were busy cutting away the torn stunsails and halyards and clearing the booms.

  The French frigate was sinking all right: she had that slow, ponderous and ominous roll of a ship with many tons of water slopping around inside her, sluicing first to one side and then to the other. In a few minutes it would be too risky to put the Calypso alongside her in case she rolled so much that their yards locked together. Indeed, the way she was going, the whole ship might well capsize.

  "They're trying to heave-to," Southwick said, "but I think the foretopsail braces have been cut. Ah, down they come! She's struck her colours, sir!"

  Ramage was almost numbed by the speed of events. What had started off as a regular battle was turning into a scrap-bag of different experiences. And Southwick was right, the Furet had been trying to heave-to - what in God's name was going on now? He swung his telescope along her deck. Men were slashing at ropes with axes - several of them chopping with tomahawks as though frantically trying to drive home nails with hammers.

  Suddenly the main yard slewed round drunkenly and the foretopsail yard, its halyard obviously let go at the run, the lifts parting, came crashing down across the foredeck. The rest of the sails and yards began to drop, swing, cant or flog as the men on deck slashed through sheets and braces, bowlines and tacks, halyards and lifts.

  "We'll heave-to on the larboard tack, if you please, Mr Aitken," Ramage said, "and I want boats hoisted out." He looked at the Furet again. "Make sure the ship's company have pistols or muskets; we're going to have more than two hundred prisoners on board in an hour or so - less, probably. If she sinks, we'll need to sling over hammocks for the survivors to hold on to until we can fish them out. Not a good day for hammocks," he added, gesturing to those used as bags to hold the roundshot. At that moment one of the masthead lookouts hailed that a xebec which he thought he had earlier seen leaving from the direction of Porto Ercole was now catching up fast and seemed to be flying a flag or pendant from the upper end of the yard.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Exactly fifteen minutes later Ramage leapt from the stern sheets of the Calypso's red cutter to seize a rope trailing over the larboard quarter of the Furet and scramble up, while the bowman tried to hook on and the rest of the boarding party grabbed at other ropes and began climbing the sinking frigate's side.

  Ramage was unarmed; knowing that he would probably have to climb a rope he had taken off his cutlass belt and then, as an afterthought, remembering their presence when he bent over slightly, had taken the two pistols from the band of his breeches and put them down on deck.

  The rope, hanging from the mizentopsail yard, was thick enough for climbing but worn smooth with use. Finally he reached the bulwark and swung himself inboard to land on the quarterdeck, where two officers were waiting for him, two rigid figures among a swirling crowd of men who were shouting with excitement and fear and obviously not far from panic.

  "Which of you is the captain?" he demanded in French.

  An officer with a bloodstained left leg unbuckled his sword and offered it with a bow. "I am . . ." but in the chatter and yelling Ramage did not catch the name, hearing only the end of the sentence, ". . . and surrender the ship to your captain."

  "I am the captain," Ramage said and asked abruptly as his boarding party came swarming over the bulwark: "You've scuttled the ship, eh?"

  The officer looked startled. He was a grey-haired man of perhaps fifty years of age: his mouth was that of a man given to worrying. He wore trousers and a plain shirt, but he was freshly shaven, which was unusual, Ramage thought sourly. He seemed to be bleeding badly from the leg wound.

  "No, not scuttled! It was you!" he said accusingly.

  "Nonsense," Ramage said angrily. "You were sinking before I opened fire! I warn you, if you've scuttled her I shall leave you all on board."

  "That damnable mortar shell that burst in our wake as we left Porto Ercole," the man protested bitterly. "It seemed not to do any harm at the time, but suddenly - you saw our pump starting - we began leaking. It was just as you suddenly increased speed - how you did it we could not understand - and we knew you'd eventually overtake us. I think the explosion must have strained our planking. Anyway, the butts of several planks began to spring and our speed through the water was just opening them up more and more, beating the pumps.

  "We tried to stop the leaks but the more we jammed in hammocks to caulk them the more the planking opened. Finally we had to bear up, but slowing the ship did not slow the leaks: we were obviously doomed. You opened fire, we fired back . . ." He held his hands out, palms upwards. "The rest you can see."

  Ramage saw Renwick scrambling over the rail and signalled to him to take charge of the two officers who, hatless, white-faced and frequently pushed aside by hurrying seamen, reminded Ramage of children lost in a country market among the bleating of sheep, the mooing of cows and the shouts of buyers and sellers.

  "That leg wound: go down to my cutter. My surgeon will soon be treating it. What happened to your surgeon?"

  The man shrugged his shoulders and gestured towards his own men, who were still running about aimlessly.

  Ramage beckoned to a couple of Calypsos and ran down to the captain's cabin. It was a curious feeling because it was a replica of his own in the Calypso - except that it was far more comfortably furnished. Heavy blue velvet curtains were held back on each side of the stern lights; two large brass-covered mahogany trunks were secured against the bulkhead; the desk was of heavy and highly-polished mahogany. The wine cooler was carved from a block of a heavy, dark wood but the lid had come off, exposing the metal lining.

  Ramage went straight to the desk and began ransacking drawers. The three on the left were unlocked and contained various items usually kept in the drawer of a trunk. The lowest drawer on the right was locked.

  "Here, open th
is with your cutlass," he told one of the seamen excitedly. There was a chance, just a chance, that in the panic . . . The wood splintered and suddenly the drawer catapulted open, sending the seaman lurching across the top of the desk as he tried to recover his balance.

  Ramage grabbed the drawer. It was heavy. Inside, fitting snugly as though made to rest there, was a plain wooden box which Ramage saw as he removed it had several holes drilled in the top and a sheet of lead riveted to the bottom. It was locked, and there was no sign of a key in the drawer. Now Renwick appeared at the door, and as he spoke Ramage realized that the whole movement of the ship was changing. She was beginning to wallow sluggishly, all life gone from her.

  "You'd best come up on deck, sir," Renwick said breathlessly. "I think she's going to capsize any minute and more than half the Frenchmen have already jumped over the side."

  Ramage nodded to the two seamen, who hurried out through the door. Ramage gave Renwick the box to carry, warning him to conceal it as much as possible, and then followed him up the companionway. "What have you done with those two officers?"

  "Down in the red cutter, sir. The wounded one is in a lot of pain. I took the liberty of telling the cutter to stand off until I gave the signal: I'm afraid these Frenchies in the water will capsize it. The green cutter from the Calypso's nearly here, and they're hoisting out the jolly boat, but I can't get any of these dam' Frenchmen to do anything about hoisting out their own boats: they've got five sitting on the booms . . . And I bet not one in four of the dam' fools can swim."

  As Ramage climbed the steps of the companionway, he tried to think what had struck him as odd about the cabin he had just left. There was something strange about it, but as he was thinking he felt the frigate roll to starboard with a terrifying slowness, stay there for what seemed to be minutes, and then begin the slow roll back to larboard. From beneath his feet the noise coming up from the lowerdeck was of water swirling and bubbling, sounding like a mill stream to a poacher leaning down to tickle trout.

  Then he was in bright sunlight with Renwick standing on the hammock nettings, waving to the red cutter. There were few Frenchmen on the Furet's decks now; most of them were in the water, clinging to hatch covers, yards, the greyish sausages of lashed-up hammocks, mess tables and forms, and other pieces of wood. Two men stood up in the bow of the cutter, beating back the Frenchmen trying to scramble on board, and as soon as it was alongside Ramage slid down the rope into it, following Renwick and the two seamen. He grinned; even in an emergency the regular routine must be followed: the seamen and Renwick had all gone down the rope before him without argument: a senior officer was always the last one into a boat and the first one out. Renwick had wrapped the box in a piece of torn sail; it looked more like a round object than a rectangular one and the Marine officer went down one-handed, the box tucked under his arm.

  Halfway back to the Calypso, Ramage looked first at the French ship, and then at the British. The French frigate looked as though she had been hit by a sudden storm; most of her remaining yards were a-cock-bill, as though the ship was in mourning, the yards forming crosses. Other yards had fallen to the deck or swung over the side. The ship was rolling from side to side even more slowly now in her massive death throes.

  By contrast the Calypso sat in the water like a gull, foretopsail backed, guns still run out, and - he counted carefully - three shot holes caused by the French. They showed up as rusty marks in the hull, although the real damage would be inside, where the shot hit, spraying up great splinters of wood or ricocheting.

  He looked back at the French ship to count her shot holes. There were eight in the hull between the fore and mainmasts, so the Calypso's shooting had been good. So it should have been; conditions and range were ideal.

  Then the red cutter was alongside and Ramage scrambled back on board the Calypso, followed by Renwick, whom Ramage signalled to go down below with the canvas-wrapped box. Ramage waited at the entry port as the Marines brought up the two French officers. He told them to help the wounded one down to Mr Bowen, the Calypso's surgeon. After that he paused and saw that the Calypso's green cutter was now among the Frenchmen struggling in the water or clinging to wreckage, picking up survivors, and the jolly boat was only a few yards away, while the launch was still being hoisted out. The wind was slowly drifting the Calypso down towards the men, who were struggling towards her, those that could not swim kicking out as they held whatever was keeping them afloat.

  As he watched, the extra seamen in the green cutter helped the Frenchmen on board, and as soon as the boat was full the men at the oars bent their backs and sent the boat surging towards the Calypso, pursued by shrill shouts from the survivors left behind.

  He looked at Aitken, who was waiting patiently, knowing how Ramage would hate what he had to say. "We have three dead from the shot that dismounted the gun, sir, and five wounded - from splinters."

  "How many badly?"

  "One, sir. Bowen says he'll probably be all right, though. The other four will be back on duty in a week."

  "The dead?"

  "Instantaneous, sir. Cut down as the gun spun off the carriage."

  Surgeon Bowen could be relied on: he would come up to the quarterdeck later to report in detail on the wounded men. He had served with Ramage long enough, and together they had suffered enough casualties in battle, for him to know the routine.

  Aitken said: "The xebec the lookout reported earlier, sir: she's closing us fast. Seem to be three or four men in it, and there's a flag or something flying from the upper end of the lateen yard. Might be local fishermen out for some pickings," Aitken added, but Ramage shook his head.

  "They'd arrive after dark . . ."

  "The sea's calm enough," Southwick commented, knowing the exact moment when to interrupt his captain's thoughts and stop him brooding. "We'll save these Frenchmen. But their ship hasn't much longer to go . . ."

  "When I left her I didn't think I'd get off before she capsized," Ramage said. "The rolling doesn't look too bad from here, but on board . . ."

  "The way her masts snatch on the shrouds - you just look at it," Southwick said, looking round for Ramage's telescope and passing it to him.

  He saw that either the Furet's rigging had not been set up very tight with the lanyards in the first place, or her hull was distorting, because her masts were like tall pines buffeted by gusts of wind. As she rolled to larboard the masts gave an enormous twitch and tightened all the shrouds on the starboard side with another violent jerk which Ramage thought would have parted them.

  Even as he watched the ship, the frequency of the roll seemed to be slowing down but it was increasing in amplitude, the masts swinging like inverted pendulums.

  "All that water swilling round as though it was inside a bladder," Aitken said miserably. His love of ships and the sea made him hate to watch a ship die, even if she was an enemy. "Fancy scuttling her . . ."

  "They didn't," Ramage said. "She sprang the butts of some planks just as we started to catch up. Seems a mortar shell burst in her wake as she came out of Porto Ercole, so one of the bomb ketches can claim her. The French didn't find any damage - until we started closing up on her and they began to drive her hard. Then she sprang a butt, then more went. . . That was why she suddenly luffed up - the water was pouring in."

  "Those bomb ketches earned their pay today," Southwick commented. "Whew, just look at that!"

  The frigate rolled towards them and, for a moment, seemed about to capsize: the remaining yards came swinging round the masts like flails, again to hang vertically, and they could see several guns dropping across the deck, ripping away the bulwarks on one side as the train and side tackles and breechings tore out the eyebolts, and then falling to crash through the other. As the Furet staggered back again, like a drunken man making an enormous effort to stay on his feet, they could see that the bulwarks, jagged where the guns had fallen, were now like the smashed-in battlements of a besieged castle.

  The red cutter was back among the survivors
, picking up more men as the jolly boat and then the launch returned to the Calypso and sodden, spluttering Frenchmen climbed up the side, to be met by seamen who marched them forward to the fo'c'sle while others kept them covered with muskets.

  Southwick waved down at the bosun, who called back: "That makes seventy-three, sir. I reckon there's another couple of hundred left."

  "Looks like it from up here," the master said, "but there's no rush, they've all found floating wreckage or hammocks. She had a full complement, from the look -"

  He broke off as the Furet rolled slowly to starboard, so that for a few moments he was looking down on to her decks, the view of a bird hovering seven or eight hundred feet above her when she was floating normally. Now he saw more guns breaking loose from the larboard side and falling across the ship, smashing their way into the sea through the bulwarks.

  Water pouring into the ship through the starboard gunports, now immersed, built up the air pressure down below and water spurted up through unexpected holes like whales spouting; suddenly a dozen or more casks popped out of the hatches like, as Southwick commented, peas rolled out of a measuring mug. Still the great masts continued to heel; several of the yards dropped so that once again they were perpendicular to the masts; then the tips of the yards touched the water as she continued rolling over, her larboard side rising like a surfacing whale as the starboard sank. With a graceful but despairing slow movement she turned upside-down, the black planking vanishing as she capsized, to be replaced by the coppered bottom of the ship. The copper was reddish here and green there and tried to reflect the sunlight; whole sections were missing, and there the teredo borers would have riddled the wood . . . The ship paused for a minute or two, white swirls of frothing water showing where air was still forcing its way out of the hull as water poured in and looking, from this distance, like grotesque whirlpools swirling round a half-tide rock.

  Suddenly they were all looking at a great smooth patch of sea, and while they absorbed that shock, dozens of pieces of wood came to the surface, some of them long topsail and topgallant yards which shot up several feet like leaping sword-fish before dropping back to float as if it were kindling tossed into a village pond. Great bubbles of air belched up and slowly the wind waves covered the smooth patch where the Furet had been.