by Dudley Pope
As he pencilled in the lines showing the ropes it seemed almost alarmingly simple, though he could imagine the difficulty he was going to have describing it all in a letter to Gianna. Imagine, he would tell her, that you have to hoist a heavy weight from the garden up to a high window in a house. You take a clothes line and tie one end to the window-ledge and the other to the base of a tree in the garden, so the line is taut and running down a steep angle.
You put a pulley on the line (Gianna would be furious with him for using the word ‘pulley’ instead of the nautical ‘block’ which she understood well enough), and hang the weight on it. Then you hook one more pulley on the weight, and another to the window-ledge. You pass a rope from the window-ledge down to the pulley on the weight, back round the pulley on the window-ledge and then down to the garden. Allora, cara mia, as you stand by the tree and haul on the rope, the weight will slowly rise up the line. And that, he would add, is what we did with the guns, give or take a few blocks, several hundred feet of rope and a few tons of weight. He could see her tracing with her finger as she read the letter, working it all out… She could never imagine just how close the Juno would be moored to the cliff, he thought grimly; so close that the ends of the yards would almost touch the rock face. He put the pad and pencil in his pocket and turned to watch the Marines attacking the battery as the Créole came in and anchored.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Next morning Ramage returned on board the Juno after inspecting the Surcouf feeling much more cheerful. Working through the night with Aitken encouraging them, the men now had the maincourse bent on the yard and furled, and the maintopsail and topgallant were both neatly faked down in slings ready for hoisting. The fourcourse was also bent on and men were sorting out the buntlines and clewlines before furling it. The foretopsail and topgallant were being hoisted up from the sail room. How they had sorted out all that running rigging by lantern light Ramage could not imagine, but by sunset the Surcouf would be ready to go into action against her erstwhile owners.
Ramage’s main worry when he first heard that the Surcouf‘s sails were all on board and stowed in the sail room was that the rats would have got at them. They were so bulky (a frigate’s maincourse comprised more than 3,000 square feet of canvas and a whole suit totalled 14,000 square feet and weighed four tons) that it was impossible to keep them inspected properly in a sail room, and even a single rat chewing a tunnel through the folds of a stowed sail could do more damage than a dozen roundshot. However, it was clear that the French had only just put the sails on board and many small patches showed they had checked them over before doing so.
It had been a good idea to fetch Aitken back: he was in his element commissioning the Surcouf and Ramage had the impression he had been getting bored with tacking back and forth with the Créole. The young Scot was fascinated by the differences in the French and British ways of rigging ships. They were slight but often significant, and he pointed them out to Ramage with all the excitement of a collector. It was an enthusiasm Ramage shared; he recognized in the Scot another man like himself, a squirrel who collected odd and often useless items of information and stored them away in his head for mental winters.
It was a habit, Ramage knew from bitter experience, that could make you unpopular in certain company. Too many men had no real interest in anything and for practical purposes were blind to most of the things that went on around them. Ramage now kept a tight rein on his tongue, but in the past had often commented on something he found interesting, only to find the other person thought he was showing off his knowledge. The episode that had made him vow he would never again begin a conversation with anyone he did not know well concerned pelicans.
He had noticed that when these heavy birds dived at a very steep angle into the water after a fish, often from a considerable height, at the very last moment they bent their long necks close up against their bodies and, for reasons which Ramage could not work out, always surfaced facing the opposite direction. It had been a topic of conversation and observation for Ramage and Southwick for weeks the last time they had been in the Caribbean. One day Ramage had mentioned it in front of a group of captains – he had been a mere lieutenant then – and to a man the captains had stared at him as though they had suddenly found in their midst someone who had just escaped from Bedlam. All of them had served in the Caribbean for at least two years and had obviously not noticed it. Aitken, who had just arrived in the West Indies for the first time, had not only noticed it but already had several theories and, he recently told Ramage, had drawn many sketches which he intended sending to an eminent naturalist he knew in Edinburgh. Apparently he had shown the sketches to Southwick, who had been able to add to them. The two of them had settled down to try to calculate the most driving question of all: why did such a heavy bird as a pelican, diving from such great heights, not break its neck?
As Ramage paused on the quarterdeck, trying to switch his thoughts from the pelicans diving round the Diamond to the problems facing him over the Rock itself, he realized that the Surgeon was waiting to speak to him, and with him was Rennick, the Marine lieutenant.
‘How are the new patients, Bowen?’
‘Both in good shape, I’m happy to say, sir,’ he said, handing Ramage the copy of the sick list. ‘The cutlass wound was a clean cut, and I can see the healing has already begun. The other man is badly bruised but I have given him another thorough examination this morning, and there are definitely no bones broken.’
‘He must have fallen fifty feet, sir,’ Rennick said apologetically.
‘Now he knows the perils of standing near a recoiling gun,’ Ramage said grimly. ‘I hope you’ve thought about what I was telling you last night…’
‘I have indeed, sir. The trouble was that I had heard of that method before – turning a gun with its breech towards the edge of a cliff and firing it. I did it because it seemed certain the recoil would run it back over the edge of the cliff.’
‘And so it would have, if the platform had been level, but there you had an uneven and rocky surface. No wonder the damned gun ran round in a curve and turned over. It only needed one of the trucks to hit a bump.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Rennick defensively, ‘at least we managed to roll it over the edge of the cliff in the end.’
‘Where it now lies undamaged and ready for the French to salvage, if we give them the chance,’ Ramage said sharply. ‘A brass gun, too. Worth three iron guns, as you well know.’
‘We destroyed the other two, though, sir,’ Rennick said contritely.
Ramage nodded, accepting Rennick’s apology. ‘That’s the safest way – double or triple charge, three roundshot and everyone behind some shelter when you fire. That’s why you’re supposed to carry an extra long trigger line when you attack a battery.’
When the lieutenant went red, Ramage asked suspiciously: ‘You did carry one, didn’t you?’
Rennick shook his head and clearly wished the deck would open up and swallow him. ‘No, sir, but I joined up the three the French were using…’
Ramage knew that the Marine lieutenant had learned several lessons and he would not repeat the mistakes again. Apart from that, it had been a brave and well executed attack, and he did not want Rennick to lose confidence in himself. ‘Very well, you destroyed the battery, which is what matters,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word with your men later.’
Rennick gave a relieved grin, saluted and left. Ramage looked at Bowen’s sick list. ‘I see you’ve discharged three more men.’
‘Yes, sir. At least, they asked to be discharged: I’d have kept them another day, but they insisted.’
‘Insisted?’ Ramage asked curiously. ‘I thought every man’s ambition is to get on the sick list for a few days’ rest!’
‘It is in most ships – indeed, it was for the first couple of weeks after we left England. But all that’s changed; these three men apparently heard some rumour about the Diamond–’ Bowen nodded towards the Rock ‘–and they, well, it seemed to m
e they wanted to join in the fun.’
‘Fun! They’ll have to work so hard they’ll probably end up back on the sick list suffering from heat stroke!’
‘We’ll see, sir,’ Bowen said with a knowing look.
Ramage walked forward to the fo’c’sle, where Southwick was busy with a party of seamen. He was watching while the carpenter and bos’n worked on an enormous block of unusual shape. The big lignum vitae sheave fitted into a thick wooden shell, one side of which was longer than the other, and open at one end. Called a voyol block, it was a spare one and rarely used. Now it would ride up the jackstay with a gun slung underneath it. Like many things in a ship that are seldom used, the block had been stowed without being washed in fresh water, and the salt had made the sheave and pin seize up. Now the carpenter was driving out the pin with his maul. It would be cleaned and driven back after being smeared with tallow, and a liberal amount of tallow would be put on the sheave so that it turned freely.
Large coils of five-inch circumference rope had been hoisted up from the store room and men were busy long-splicing them to make up an eighteen hundred foot length. That would be used (with the two large single-sheave blocks which had already been smeared with tallow) to make up the enormous tackle which would haul both gun and voyol block up the jackstay. More men were making up strops, using old rope that would not stretch. They would sling the gun beneath the voyol block. Mentally he ticked them off the list as he walked aft again to look over the taffrail, where Lacey, the fourth lieutenant, was standing and occasionally shouting down instructions. Already the Juno’s two cutters were being secured together, ready to take on shore the 6-pounder gun that would cover the landing place. One spar was lashed across the bow of each of them like a narrow bridge, and another near the stern, so that they were kept eight feet apart.
Amidships the crew of the jolly boat were about to cast off, towing the carriage of the 6-pounder and carrying the breeching, train tackle, handspikes, rammer and sponge in the boat. The gun itself was lying on the Juno’s deck with slings round it, ready for hoisting out.
Ramage shouted down to the coxswain: ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘All ready, sir.’
Ramage called to Lacey, who hurried forward to get into the boat. ‘I’m afraid the cutters aren’t ready yet, sir.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on them. Now, you’re perfectly clear what has to be done?’
‘Aye, aye, sir: tow the carriage round to the cove. If we can float it into the cove and haul it ashore, do so; otherwise secure it so that it floats clear and come back for more men.’
Ramage nodded and Lacey scrambled down into the jolly boat.
Today’s work towards the Diamond plan was easy; he could only pray that tomorrow – in fact for the next three days – the sea would stay as smooth, with no swell. He’d be quite content for today to get the 6-pounder mounted on that ledge, to cover the landing place.
A lookout aloft hailed that La Créole was coming into sight round the end of Diamond Hill, but had no signals flying. Ramage, noting that Wagstaffe had searched as far as Pointe des Salines without sighting anything, acknowledged the hail and moodily began pacing the quarterdeck, occasionally going aft and looking down at the men working in the cutters. They were doing perfectly well – Lacey, like most young officers, was too keen to let men work on their own.
Fifteen paces forward and he was abreast the skylight over his cabin, three more and he was passing the mizenmast. Three more and the wheel was abeam and the binnacle. Six more and he was passing the companionway, its coaming studded with roundshot which fitted like black oranges into cup-shaped holes cut in the wood. Now he was level with the capstan and the water cask with the Marine sentry guarding it. He had doubled the daily ration for the men while they were doing this heavy work: there was plenty to spare with the Surcouf’s casks available.
The deck was scorching hot, even though the awning was stretched overhead, and as he turned to walk aft he felt a momentary dizziness. He was tired and bored. Tired because there was so little time for sleep, and bored because he was the captain, the man whose life comprised weeks of boredom, of just ensuring that the day-to-day ship routine was carried out properly, punctuated every few weeks (months, more likely) by a few hours of action. He reached the taffrail, glanced down at the cutters, and began to walk forward again.
Now was a good example of the boredom: Aitken was working hard on board the Surcouf getting the sails hoisted up and bent on; Baker was on his way to Barbados in La Mutine with all the excitement of his first command; Wagstaffe was tacking north again with La Créole for another look at Fort Royal. Southwick was busy on the foredeck, preparing everything for hoisting the jackstay tomorrow. Captain Ramage had nothing whatever to do and could only pace up and down, occasionally looking at the work in progress. Even the cook’s mate was busy – skimming the slush, from the smell of it; boiling the salt beef in the coppers and taking off the fat that floated to the surface and carefully storing it. When it was cool he would sell it to the men, earning himself some illicit pennies or tots and giving the men something to help the hard biscuit slide down their gullets.
He could go down to his cabin and continue his letter to Gianna: he tried to add a few paragraphs every day so that she had a sort of diary to read when it eventually arrived many weeks later. Or he could start a letter to his father, who would be interested to read about the problems he was facing over the Diamond… But he felt too fidgety to sit at his desk and anyway the moment he saw the captain sitting there, the clerk would come trotting in with papers and reports for him to sign. Being a conscientious man, he would also have a list of trivial reports that Ramage should have made, or chased his officers into making.
He had only just come back from the Surcouf and if he returned there now Aitken would start worrying. If he went up to the foredeck Southwick, his white hair matted with perspiration and his temper getting short, would think that Ramage considered his men were not working fast enough.
His next look over the taffrail showed that the two cutters were now secured together and he realized thankfully that he had a job to do. It was not a job for the captain, but one that had to be done, and mercifully Lacey was over at the Diamond with the carriage in tow.
‘Haul round to the starboard side,’ he called to Jackson, who was acting as coxswain of the two boats. ‘Secure your painter and sternfasts so you are directly under the main yard.’
Two luff tackles were already hooked into the yard tackle pendant and secured to the slings round the gun lying on the deck. They had been used earlier to lift the gun off the carriage which was now being towed to the cove.
A hail to Southwick brought twenty men hurrying aft to man the luff tackles while more ran to the braces. Ramage went to the entry port at the gangway and watched until the two boats were secured alongside. As soon as they were ready he turned to the men at the luff tackles.
‘Hoist away, now. You four, tail on those steadying lines, we don’t want the gun swinging.’
The men heaved steadily, and slowly the gun lifted off the deck, hanging horizontally from the carefully placed slings. Finally it was higher than the hammock nettings and Ramage signalled them to stop hoisting.
Another signal to the men at the braces and a hurried warning to the men holding the steadying lines brought the main yard swinging round a few degrees, back to its normal position. This swung the gun out over the bulwarks until it was suspended above the boats.
The men with the steadying lines climbed up into the hammock nettings so they could see down into the boats, and Ramage gave the order for the men at the luff tackles to begin lowering. The gun came down foot by foot at first, and then inch by inch. As it neared the boat, Ramage gave the signal for them to stop lowering. Now he had to make sure that the men at the steadying lines kept the gun parallel with the boats while he gave the final order which would swing the yard round a fraction more, so that the gun was precisely over the gap between them.
> Jackson gave Ramage a signal that all was well and slowly the gun was lowered again. The men in each boat held up their hands in case it began twisting, obviously not trusting the men at the steadying lines. Then the gun was in the water between the two boats, its muzzle and breech clear of the spars and a moment later disappearing below it.
Ramage shouted to the men at the luff tackles to stop lowering and saw that Jackson was fully prepared. Four men at the bow of the two boats leaned over to the forward sling and then signalled to Ramage, who told the men at the forward tackle to lower gently. Now the top of the forward sling was almost level with the spar joining the two boats and swiftly the four men put on a rolling hitch, using a short piece of heavy rope. Then they secured the other end to the centre of the spar.
While they had been doing that, four men had been securing the after sling to the after spar while Jackson cast off the steadying lines. Now the gun, six feet long, was slung between the two spars and hanging three or four feet below the water, but the weight was still being taken by the luff tackles. ‘All secure?’ Ramage shouted, and when Jackson answered that it was, he signalled to the men at the tackles to slack away. Slowly, as the weight of the gun was transferred through the slings to the boats, they sank deeper in the water. But it was an even settling; neither was down by bow or stern. The whole twelve hundredweight of gun – which now weighed less in water – was slung under the two boats, and two seamen with boathooks jabbed at the hooks of the tackles to release them from the slings.
The heavy blocks soared up in the air, the yard was braced round again, and Ramage called to Jackson: ‘Carry on then, and make for the cove: Mr Lacey will be waiting for you. And make sure the gun tackle is hooked into the cascabel ring and moused before you let go!’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Jackson grinned, ‘otherwise we’ll have to dive for it!’
The painter and sternfast were cast off and the two boats edged away from the Juno, the men rowing from the outboard side of each one. Progress was painfully slow but Jackson was careful to use the wind so that it helped them in their crabwise course towards the Diamond.
