Ramage's Signal Page 13

  “Yer uncle never missed them rahbbets, sir,” he said. “Bein’ as ‘ow ‘e’d have given me permission ter snare, net or shoot any rahbbets I wanted, though ‘e’d have drawn a line at pheasints or partridge. But poachin’ ‘em was wot gave ‘em the aroma, sir; catchin’ ‘em legal like would have taken the taste away, like bilin’ ‘em too long.”

  Now Lewis was reporting to the landowner’s nephew and, Ramage reflected wryly, everyone in the Calypso was taking part in a kind of poaching …

  “Larboard side, sir, startin’ abowt ten feet outboard of the jeers; the yard just split like an ‘ead o’ fresh celery. The split be fourteen feet three inches long, clean as a whistle, none o’ the wood lorst. Glue up a treat, it will; bolt every foot, then six or eight fishes ‘bout eighteen feet long, and wooldin’ over the ‘ole thing and the yard’ll be stronger than afore it broke.”

  “You deserve a brace of pheasants, Lewis, and I’ll tell my uncle!”

  “Ah, ‘ave ‘em ‘anging in the barn a week an’ they’ll roast up a treat.”

  “When can I expect to have that yard across again?”

  Lewis scratched his head and then, holding his fists out in front of him, began sticking out one finger after another. Finally he had all the fingers and thumb of his right hand and the thumb and two fingers of his left.

  “What be the time now, sir, then?”

  Ramage looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle lamp. “Just before midnight.”

  “If I can have some men to help haul the two sections of the yard so I can true ‘em up before gluing and bolting, and then help me and my mates turn it while we’s driving the bolts and then fitting the fishes—well, ten or twelve hours, sir.”

  “No signs of rot?”

  “None, sir; clean as a whistle.”

  “Why did she go?”

  “Reckon the wood just got brittle from the tropical ‘eat, sir. Sun’s always beatin’ on the top of the yard. And French wood, sir. Must have been an old yard from another ship, ‘cos it’s in one piece. A new one at the time this ship was built would be two trees scarphed together; they’d do a vertical scarph in the middle. Short o’ long timber, they are.”

  “Anyway,” Ramage said thankfully, “you can glue, bolt, fish and woold without having to cut scarphs?”

  “Easy, sir, just so long as the sea don’t get up and set those two pieces rollin’ about the deck!”

  Ramage nodded and Lewis went back down the ladder. How long had it all taken? Perhaps twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, on a calm Mediterranean night, the Calypso had been changed suddenly from an efficient fighting machine—capable, for example, of sinking every ship in the convoy with the ease of Lewis and his ferret chasing rabbits out of the burrow and into nets, to despatch them with a sharp blow across the back of the neck—to a wretched hulk that could not work her way to windward or manoeuvre against much more than a laden merchant ship.

  Well, Aitken and Southwick had been complaining that patrolling off the coast of Languedoc was a dull business but now, although they might be short on fighting, they could hardly complain there was little to do: summoning up a convoy of fifteen French ships by juggling with a giant chess board, a bout with a Gulf of Lions gale, and now the foreyard crashing down around their ears should keep them occupied for a while.

  Ramage was mistaken. Southwick was back on the quarter-deck five minutes later, bustling because he tended to bustle after any unusual physical exertion, as though it wound him up like a grandfather clock.

  “Shall I sway up the spare maintopsail yard in the meantime, sir, and set the spare fore-topsail on it? Just in case we meet something.”

  Having thirty or forty extra seamen working round the fore-mast sending up the spare yard while Lewis and his men started on the broken yard would slow up everything.

  “No, we’ll replace that fore-topsail just as soon as they get the spare up from the sailroom, but after that we concentrate on Lewis and his mates. It’s a case where jury-rigging is likely to delay proper repairs by twelve hours.”

  “How long does Lewis want, then?”

  “He says ten or twelve hours.”

  “By noon, eh? Well, he’s a reliable man, sir, and if that’s his estimate we can rely on it.”

  “I hope so. Will you keep an eye on the bosun while they bend on the new fore-topsail?”

  “Set her flying, sir, once we’re ready?”

  Ramage looked astern at the merchant ships, found he could not make out more than one or two, and once again searched the horizon with the night-glass.

  “No, leave it furled until we have the foreyard repaired and swayed up: these damned mules astern are so slow we’ll probably have to put a reef or two in the maintopsail just to avoid leaving them too far astern.”

  Southwick gave one of his typical sniffs. He had a dozen or more, each of which had a different tone and meaning. This one, Ramage knew, was reserved for situations of which Southwick disapproved but was powerless to change.

  A fast frigate in a stiff wind would be hard put to keep these fifteen merchantmen in any sort of formation; closing and firing shots across their bows would not hurry them up; shouted threats of putting a round shot into them would result in a shower of Gascon, Breton and Norman abuse. So, since the Calypso was for the moment a disabled frigate, and far from there being a stiff wind there was only a mild breeze, the only thing was to be thankful that of all times the foreyard decided to split, now was the most convenient, because the Calypso was hardly rolling at all, and repairs should be comparatively easy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AT DAWN, when the Calypso’s ship’s company were at quarters, guns loaded and run out, ready for any enemy that might emerge as the darkness vanished, Ramage slowly walked forward, stopping to talk with the guns’ crews.

  He found these “dawn promenades,” as Southwick called them, a useful way of communicating with the men. Sometimes a seaman had a genuine grievance which only the Captain could settle, but because he was a shy man or feared upsetting the First Lieutenant to whom he was supposed to go first, he would say nothing, and that sometimes meant he would become morose, surly or a troublemaker with a chip on his shoulder.

  Ramage’s habit of walking casually from one gun to another, often with some comment on the weather or the shape of a headland if they were near land, put him physically close to most of the men. He knew them well by name; he knew the family history of many of them; he had been in action with all of them.

  Sometimes a hint would come from Jackson, or perhaps from Bowen, the observant Surgeon. It meant that often Ramage, pausing at a gun to ask one man if the rheumatism was now gone, would be able to talk to the actual man who had a real or imagined grievance or problem.

  These usually multiplied after a sack of mail arrived on board: letters from home seemed to bring as much misery as joy: interfering neighbours relating gossip, money problems, pregnant wives, sick children, aged parents—a seaman could rarely do anything to help any of them because he was a quarter of the hemisphere away, or about to sail from Britain.

  It was a chilly morning but a clear sky warned of a scorching day. Dawn was coming fast—soon they would be able “to see a grey goose at a mile,” so the lookouts would then go aloft and the rest would stand down from quarters. Ramage had not passed the mainmast before he discovered one thing: the men who had been on shore at the semaphore station for several days were still bubbling over about it: to them walking on grass once again, being able to compete with each other to see who could hurl a stone the farthest, even swimming from the beaches (though few of them could actually swim, most of them enjoyed ducking their heads under) had been like special leave.

  He cursed the mistral: but for the need to sail for those three days he would have been able to rotate the men so that all had a chance to stay on shore.

  The two guns on one side and the three on the other dismounted by the falling yard were all back on their carriages again, although two on each sid
e were hauled up to the centreline clear of the space where Lewis and his mates were working.

  Already Ramage could smell the hot glue and the yard, now lying fore and aft, was once again a continuous piece. Every foot or so there were a dozen turns of rope, each with a handspike stuck in it. Lewis had used handspikes for the Spanish windlasses of rope clamping the two pieces of yard tightly together while the glue set. There was not a man within several feet of the yard: the carpenter’s mates were busy preparing long planks—Lewis would call them battens—to fish the yard. They would be laid along where it had been glued, overlapping the length of the split, and eventually completely encircling it, like many splints supporting a broken leg. The fishes or battens would sit on “flats” specially planed along the curved surface of the yard and be held in position by bolts and nails.

  Lewis saw Ramage coming and, running his fingers through his hair after rubbing his hands down the sides of his trousers to remove some of the glue, stood ready to report.

  Ramage eyed the repair so far. There was enough daylight now to see the runs of glue from where the two split pieces had been fitted together. Plenty of glue had dripped on to the deck planking, too, which would later need holystoning, but he could see very little damage from the spar’s fall. The lifts must have held each side just long enough to make the two halves swing down like pendulums, rather than crash down as though rolled off a cliff.

  The black objects, several feet long and narrow, like giant corkscrews, were augers, and after Lewis saluted he pointed to them.

  “All going well, sir; so far I think we’re even a bit ahead o’ ourselves. Got her glued up and held by them Spanish wind-lushes and as soon as we got enough light to sight ‘em, we go in with the augers and drill for the bolts. The armourer’s mate’s goin’ to cut a few more bolts down to size (I got almost all I need that fit; just short of six) as soon as we can get the galley fire going to give him ‘eat.”

  Ramage watched as Lewis showed where he had marked the positions for the bolts. “They’ll be set into the wood so they won’t chafe nothing, and anyway the woolding will cover ‘em.”

  “You can’t hoop it, I suppose?”

  Lewis shook his head. “We just don’t have the iron ‘oops, sir. Nothing I’d like better than drive an ‘ot iron ‘oop every three feet; that’d set it up like a new spar. No, sir, it’ll ‘ave to be woolding. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, sir,” he added hastily. “These ‘ere blacksmiths swear by ‘ot ‘oops but I b’aint so sure. ‘Ere, sir,” he said confidentially, taking a pace nearer and dropping his voice, “it’s on account of rust.”

  “Is that so?” a startled Ramage replied.

  “Yus, sir. They ‘oop masts and spars now as a matter o’ course when they make ‘em, but once there’s a few coats of paint on the ‘oops, yer can’t see what’s goin’ on underbeneath. But I seen it, sir; I seen masts and yards where, when they’ve got the ‘oops off, underbeneath it’s been rusting away for years and the ‘oops is thin as paper. As paper,” he repeated disgustedly. “I ask yer, sir, what’s the good o’ ‘oops like that? Might just as well put on a few pages of the Morning Post like a winding sheet and paint it over.

  “No, sir,” Lewis said firmly, “wooldin’s the answer, and it stand to reason. With ‘oops you can’t see what’s going on under-beneath—and that rust makes the ‘oops swell, too. I’ve seen some that the rust has swelled so much they’ve split orf by their-selves. But with wooldin’, you can see.

  “First you use good stretched rope. It’s bin used so you know it’s strong an’ sound. You nail one end to the yard and then start passin’ it round, ‘eaving a good strain on it, and nailing. That way a nail every couple o’ feet ‘olds the strain you’ve ‘eaved, and by the time you got six or eight turns on and nailed, you’ve got that spar gripped better than with an ‘oop and now, sir, you tell me the two big advantages you’ve got over the ‘oop.”

  Ramage could see more than two, but it seemed unfair to spoil the climax of Lewis’s exposition. “You tell me,” he said cautiously.

  “Well, sir, stands to reason. ‘Ow many turns have you got on, eh?”

  “Let’s say eight.”

  “Right, sir. Diameter of the rope used—say one inch. Eight turns of rope lying side by side and well nailed down means that bit of wooldin’ is at least eight inches wide and is ‘olding eight times the breakin’ strain of the rope. And ‘ow wide is an ‘oop?”

  Ramage was saved having to guess by Lewis’s exultant, “You see, sir, stands to reason. But”—he held up an admonitory finger—”that’s only one of the advantages. The other one—and by my reckonin’ it’s the greatest one—is that you can go along every few months and check it over. You give the wooldin’ a good bang with a mallet and you’ll soon see if the rope’s still sound and the nails ‘oldin’ in the wood. Not like an ‘oop ‘iding its weakness under coats of paint.”

  “So woolding it is,” Ramage said, knowing that he would be there for half an hour if he let Lewis carry on. The man talked sense and Ramage would have happily listened to his wisdom for the rest of the day—if the foreyard was not lying on the deck beside them.

  “Ah,” Lewis said, “that be light enough to start drilling for them bolts. If you’ll excuse me, sir—now, Butcher, let’s start turning them augers.”

  By nine o’clock, with the sun just beginning to get some warmth in it, Ramage heard a clattering of metal and looked forward from the quarterdeck to see the armourer’s mate emptying a sack of bolts at Lewis’s feet beside the foreyard. The carpenter bent down, picked up one of the bolts and examined it critically. He looked round for a heavy hammer, went over to the first of the holes drilled right through the yard and the fish on each side, and pressed in the first two or three inches of the bolt, motioning to the armourer’s mate to hold it steady while he swung the hammer, which had a handle five feet long.

  The rest of the carpenter’s mates stopped to watch and, at an order from the carpenter, leaned against the yard to steady it, standing alternately. The armourer’s mate held the bolt at arm’s length, obviously afraid one of the carpenter’s blows would miss, glance off and hit him.

  The carpenter struck one blow, and then called to one of his men, who had a jar of Stockholm tar and a brush. He dabbed the bolt with tar and after each blow with the hammer wetted the bolt and wood again.

  As the bolt drove into the wood one of the mates crouched down to watch for the other end to emerge. He had to make sure that the wood did not split and that the lower fish was held securely by the turns of the Spanish windlasses, even though the glue had not yet set hard.

  “Here she comes!” he called, and at once the carpenter began delivering lighter strokes. “An inch to go … end’s level … out half an inch and no splitting …”

  The carpenter dropped the hammer with the proud gesture of a skilled craftsman: other and lesser men could drive the remaining bolts now he had shown them how it should be done, and then clench the lower ends over the big washers, or roves, so that each bolt became a great rivet.

  Already the bosun was cutting lengths of rope, each one long enough to go round the yard eight times, and his mates were busy putting whippings on each end to prevent the strands unlaying. Several men with chisels and gouges were cutting grooves round the yard just deep enough for the rope to lie in for a third of its diameter, but because of the fishes the grooves need be only along the edges of the planks. Lying ready were piles of copper nails, awls to drill the holes in the wood and fids to make holes through the whole rope, rather than let the copper nails drive down between the strands.

  Southwick came up the quarterdeck ladder after a tour of inspection and reported to Ramage: “He’ll have finished it by noon, sir: a good man, Lewis; he’s got a sense of order. Prepares things so that as he finishes one part the next one is ready.”

  “One of those bolts could make a bad split if it’s a fraction too big or the hole bored too small,” Ramage said. “I’d like to s
ee Lewis drive them all.”

  Southwick nodded. “Aye, sir, that’s the one thing that really could set us back a day. I’ll go down and tell him.”

  As the Master left, Ramage looked astern gloomily. It did not seem possible that fifteen ships could occupy so much space: they were spread from a mile astern of the Calypso—that was the Sarazine—in a vast semicircle to the horizon. As soon as Lewis has driven those bolts, Ramage vowed, the Calypso would be forcing them into the formation described in the orders that Orsini had delivered to each master.

  Martin was the officer of the deck and it was Orsini’s watch. Martin was proving a very competent watchkeeper and Ramage was thankful that his next letter to Gianna would still be able to give Paolo honest praise because he was (apart from mathematics) improving almost daily.

  Ramage guessed that both youngsters were giving impatient glances astern, waiting for the Captain to turn the Calypso back to crack the whip round the merchant ships. Neither of them appreciated that for the time being it did not matter; what mattered was that an unexpected roll did not upset the foreyard, which could not be chocked up, shored up, roped down, wedged or lashed too tightly at this stage because it was important that when drilled and bolted it was in its natural shape. In an emergency, yes, it would be worth risking bolting in a slight bend, but at this stage with the convoy at least following, albeit like sheep ambling across a field in search of fresh grass, and no risk of an enemy, good formation did not really matter. Not, Ramage realized, that he could say such a thing out loud in front of his officers.

  “We could do with the Passe Partout now, sir,” Orsini said cautiously. As a rule midshipmen did not initiate conversations with captains, and Paolo was more than anxious that he should not appear to take advantage of the fact that the Marchesa was his aunt. The result was, of course, that he spoke to the Captain less than if he had been a complete stranger.

  “We could also do with another frigate,” Ramage said sourly. “But in these light airs, sir, a tartane …”