Ramage's Signal Page 14

  Ramage gave a sniff that he was sure Southwick would envy; a perfect blend of understanding Paolo’s motives in making the remark, a superior knowledge of the sailing ability of tartanes in general and the Passe Partout in particular, and some information that Paolo did not possess.

  “If I was the master of the Sarazine,” Ramage said, “I don’t think I’d be bothered by any tartane in my wake.”

  “But she has swivels, sir. Three-pounder shot whistling round your ears …”

  “And the Sarazine has nine-pounders, and a stem that could cut the Passe Partout in half without scraping any paint …”

  “Yes, sir,” Paolo agreed regretfully. “Still, the Passe Partout is keeping well up; she’s only one ship astern of the Sarazine.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Ramage said heavily. “Fetch me the French signal book: it is in the binnacle drawer.”

  Ramage glanced at it to check a signal, and said: “Mr Martin—hoist the French signal for ‘The convoy is to take up close formation at once,’ and fire a gun to draw attention to it. Leave it hoisted until I give the word.” He handed the signal book to the Lieutenant, pointing out the flags.

  Three minutes later, with the flags hoisted, one of the Calypso’s sternchase guns was fired. The smoke drifted forward over the quarterdeck and as it cleared Ramage looked at the French ships with his glass, shut it with a snap, and said to Martin: “I’m going to my cabin. Pass the word if those mules pay any attention to the signal.”

  As he sat down on the settee, remembering he had not filled in his journal for the previous day’s events, Ramage knew that although Paolo wanted to get on board the Passe Partout simply because he was a young lad who dreamed of his own command, the fact was that Lewis would have the yard repaired by noon; it would be hoisted and the foresail bent on and the lead of the fore-topsail sheets corrected by two o’clock at the latest, and it would be better if the convoy was in some sort of formation by then, rather than having the Calypso chasing round in light airs …

  The Passe Partout, according to Paolo, had a master, mate and four men on board. That, the boy admitted, was all he saw. So there would also be a cook, and perhaps another couple of men who were sleeping when Paolo was on board. Nine men, say a dozen at the most. The problem was not how to overpower a dozen men and seize the ship, but how to do it without fourteen other ships seeing it, getting alarmed and bolting.

  He told the sentry to pass the word for Aitken, who arrived breathless, assuming something had gone wrong.

  “No,” Ramage assured him, “quite to the contrary. It is just that we’ll very soon need a sheepdog to yap at the convoy’s heels.”

  “Ah—that tartane, sir, the Passe Partout.”

  “You’ve been listening to young Orsini!”

  “Yes, sir, but I must admit I think she’s the one I’d choose.”

  “You’re more concerned with sparing the fewest men for a prize crew,” Ramage said teasingly.

  “Aye, that’s true, sir, but I can find a dozen without much strain.”

  “And who would you put in command?” Ramage asked out of curiosity.

  “Orsini, if we just want yapping at their heels; Martin if there are likely to be any serious decisions to be taken which he can’t refer to you.”

  “You have a good opinion of Martin.”

  “Yes, sir, he’ll go far. And he’s having an excellent influence on Orsini. They work well together. That sort of thing is, in my experience, unusual: normally a midshipman wants to show off and a lieutenant won’t listen to him. But they both like and trust each other, like a younger and older brother. Orsini has, well, I suppose it’s a cosmopolitan view because of his background, and Martin is a fine seaman. Each wants to learn what the other has to offer—at least, that’s my impression, sir.”

  Ramage nodded because Aitken’s opinion coincided with his own, though the Scot had phrased it more succinctly.

  “So we want the tartane, then, and Martin can command it with Orsini as mate.”

  “Night attack, sir?”

  “No. We don’t want them firing off those swivels and alarming the rest of the convoy. No, we must take her without a shot being fired, and the only way I can think of is this.” For the next five minutes Ramage gave Aitken his orders.

  Within an hour of the men finishing their midday meal the great foreyard was hoisted, using the capstan to raise its fifteen hundredweight up the foremast. Running rigging was fitted and by the time the fore-topsail sheets were properly rove, the fore-sail, the second largest sail in the ship, was lying at the foot of the mast ready to be hoisted and bent on.

  The sail was made up of more than one thousand five hundred square feet of canvas; along the head of the sail, where it would be laced to the yard, it measured within inches of fifty feet; along the curved foot it was a couple of feet less, while the luffs—the vertical sides—were 31 feet.

  The sailmaker, bosun and his mates had already checked over the sail and made repairs, and Ramage was surprised how little damage it had suffered. Most of the tears had been vertical along the seams; the cloth had held while the stitching gave way. Reef points had been checked over and many replaced—not through damage but because of wear. Two reef cringles had also been replaced, along with all the bowline cringles on the starboard side of the sail.

  Now fifty men were busy round the sail. Yard ropes were rove to the reef cringles; buntlines, running vertically along the sail and normally used for hauling it up to the yard for furling, were rove through their respective blocks which were once again secured to the yard.

  Topmen went aloft and out along the yard; slowly the sail was hoisted up as Aitken shouted his orders through the speaking-trumpet. Once the head of the sail reached the yard, like a great sheet being pegged out on a washing line, the topmen secured it, hauling the canvas taut. With that done, Aitken gave the orders to furl the sail, which was then hauled up to the yard, gathered like an enormous sausage, and secured with gaskets.

  “The yard seems to sit well enough,” Southwick commented to Ramage. “As straight as before. Not so much spring in her, but she’s bound to be stiffer where she’s bolted and fished.”

  “The yard is stronger than before, anyway,” Ramage said dryly. “She won’t break there again!”

  “You won’t be setting stunsails for a while, sir?”

  “No—why?”

  “Lewis mentioned to me that—well, in the rush to get the yard repaired he hadn’t noticed that the larboard stunsail boom is in two pieces, and he has to make a new one. Matter of an hour or so.”

  “If that’s all he’s forgotten, he did a good job,” Ramage said. “Send for him and his mates: they deserve some praise—and some sleep, too.”

  As soon as the men were lined up on the quarterdeck, Lewis standing a pace in front of them, Ramage thanked them briefly. More than a dozen words of praise had them shuffling with embarrassment, and Ramage could see that three or four of them were almost asleep on their feet, having been working on the yard for nearly twelve hours.

  Once the carpenter had led his mates below, Ramage explained to Southwick his plan for the Passe Partout and the Master chuckled. “Ah, I wish I was a youngster again; they get all the fun.”

  “You’ve had your share,” Ramage said unsympathetically, “and there’ll be more to come before you go over the standing part of the foresheet.”

  “Aye, I hope so,” Southwick said.

  “There’d better be,” Ramage said, “otherwise I’ll go back to Cornwall and breed horses.”

  Knowing how much Ramage disliked horses and riding, Southwick gave a broad grin, and nodded when Ramage said: “Send Martin, Orsini, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi down to my cabin, and look up the Passe Partout’s number in our version of the convoy orders. Eight, I think it was. Then,”—he took out the French signal book and looked up a signal—”be ready to hoist ‘Pass within hail.’”

  The Passe Partout’s big triangular lateen sail bulging from the curving ya
rd hoisted on her single mast reminded Ramage of a shark’s fin slicing through the water as she came up astern of the Calypso.

  Most of the ships in the convoy had made some attempt to get into formation, or rather they bunched up closer to the Sarazine, which in turn was obviously trying to stay in the Calypso’s wake. Most were three miles or more astern now that the frigate, unknown to the convoy, was deliberately outpacing it.

  Aitken admired the way that the Captain had first hoisted the signal for the convoy to take up closer formation, one he knew they were incapable of obeying with any sort of efficiency, and given them a couple of hours to do their best. As the Captain had predicted, they had simply closed up on the Sarazine like chicks following the mother hen.

  Aitken then had noticed that the Captain’s telescope was more often pointing out to the sides than directly astern and he later commented that he was more concerned that the convoy formation became narrower than wider; that the ships bulged out astern rather than strung out across the width of the horizon.

  Then, simultaneously with hoisting the Passe Partout’s number and the signal for her to pass within hail, Mr Ramage had almost imperceptibly edged the Calypso over to one edge of the convoy: all the merchant ships were now over on the Calypso’s larboard quarter. And, he guessed, the Passe Partout was going to be ordered up on the starboard side, out of sight of the rest of them …

  The tartane, her hull blue and mast white, was now a mile astern, gliding up and over the slight swell waves like a gull, her foresail flapping idly as the big lateen sail took all the wind in a great bellying curve swelled out by the following breeze. There were two men in the waist of the ship, almost hidden by the bow because of the tartane’s deep sheer, and Aitken could see two more men at the tiller. In this wind it could be handled by one, so the other was probably the master just standing there giving orders.

  There were three lumps down each side on top of the bulwarks looking rather like horses’ heads, and which Aitken recognized as swivel guns, covered in protective canvas covers that distorted their shape.

  “How many men can you distinguish?” Ramage asked. “Only four, sir. Perhaps more will come up when she gets closer.”

  Ramage looked across at Martin. “It’s going to be quite a jump down. Are you sure you won’t break your necks?”

  “Quite sure, sir.”

  Ramage looked at Paolo, who had changed his usual weapons of a cutlass with his midshipman’s dirk to use as a main gauche, to two pistols clipped in his belt and the dirk, which was shorter than the cutlass.

  Jackson favoured a half-pike and two pistols. Four feet and a half long including its sharp iron head, the half-pike was a good jabbing weapon with an ash staff stout enough to ward off a slashing cutlass. Both Stafford and Rossi remained loyal to pistols and to cutlasses, with the belts pulled round so that the blades hung down their backs, out of the way and less likely to trip them up.

  The remaining two seamen were made by a wilful Nature as the exact opposite of each other, although they were close friends. Baxter and Johnson came from the same village in Lincolnshire, attended the same tiny school together for two years before going to work with their fathers as labourers on adjoining farms—and were picked up by the same press-gang sent out on a swing through the countryside from Lincoln.

  Baxter, at six feet two inches, was the tallest man in the Calypso and had wide shoulders and a chest that looked as though they could break a capstan bar by leaning on it. He also had one of the quietest voices and gentlest natures of anyone aboard. He had only one weakness, drink. When, as Johnson would say fearfully, “the drink was in him,” Baxter became an enraged ox who could interpret a shipmate’s accidental glance as a mortal insult.

  By contrast, Johnson was so small that the top of his head barely reached Baxter’s shoulder. His voice was shrill and when provoked—which was rarely—he sounded like a nagging shrew, but his was the only voice that Baxter really listened to, apart from petty officers and officers giving orders.

  Both men were superb pistol shots. No one knew how it happened because, as Johnson once admitted, the only guns they used as boys were shotguns, and then only for poaching. As if to partner the ability with pistols, both men were excellent with cutlasses. Baxter could use his height and strength to chop his way through a crowd: Johnson was as nimble as a Morris dancer and could swerve, duck and parry to the utter confusion of enemy seamen trained to use a cutlass as a slashing weapon with the same finesse as the ship’s cook using a cleaver to cut twenty-pound blocks of salt beef.

  Ramage spoke once more to Martin: “The canvas bag—ah, I see you have it. You’ve checked it holds all you need?”

  “Aye aye, sir. Chart, tables, signal books—French and English—and a list of the convoy. Orsini has my sextant, and Jackson the set of French flags we’ve just sewn up.”

  Ramage glanced astern and was startled to see how fast the Passe Partout was approaching. Martin and his men looked a fine party of French seamen: white trousers (grubby) and blue shirts (torn) were not the French naval uniform because at this time there was not one for seamen, but it was just the rig that a smart captain would insist his men wore, because sewing their own clothes (or paying a shipmate to do it) made it as easy to use white and blue cloth as any other.

  “Deck there—foremast here!”

  Damn! The last thing Ramage wanted with that tartane so close was a lot of bellowing in English, and Aitken snatched up the speaking-trumpet, which would at least funnel his voice upwards.

  “Deck here!”

  “There’s another ship coming up well astern of the convoy, sir. Enemy, I reckon, because they’re all keeping away from her!”

  “Very well, I’ll send a man up with a glass.”

  Southwick lumbered over to Ramage, sniffing as he walked, like a disgruntled bloodhound. “Can only be one of two things, sir,” he said.

  Ramage nodded. “I know.”

  “Either,” Southwick said, drawing out the word and carrying on as if he had not heard his Captain’s reply, “Algerine pirates up from the coast, or a British privateer.”

  “Yes. Which are you putting your money on?”

  “Algerine. We can sink an Algerine and all the Frogs will cheer us, but a British privateer …”

  “Yes,” Ramage answered shortly, his mind working fast. Fifteen French merchant ships would be waiting—were at this moment waiting for him to beat back to them and drive off or sink whatever it was, Algerine or British. He looked aloft impatiently and saw that the man sent up with the telescope was just settling himself and opening the lens tubes.

  But the Passe Partout was now very close—and, damn and blast it, was obviously intending to come close alongside to lar-board in plain view of the convoy.

  “Deck there—French ship’s—”

  “Shut up!” Aitken’s brief shout was deliberately slurred. Ramage swung his glass across the convoy and saw that several of the ships were now hoisting flag signals with a speed that contrasted with their earlier leisurely response to his. As he watched he saw a string run up on the Sarazine, to be followed by a flash, a spurt of smoke and a muffled bang as she fired a gun to draw attention to it.

  Aitken looked with his glass and then opened the French signal book. “On the first hoist is ‘Enemy vessel,’ the second signifies ‘bearing’ and the third is ‘north-west.’”

  “Ignore them. I didn’t know you spoke French,” Ramage said. “A little. I read it better.”

  “The book gives only ‘Enemy,’ doesn’t it? Not more explicit—ah, here comes the man with the glass. What did you see, Kelso?”

  The man was almost breathless from his climb up and down the mast, and he gave the glass back to Aitken, handling it carefully as though it would explode.

  Do not rush him, Ramage told himself, just be calm and nonchalant; do not scream at the poor fellow a question like: “Well, what did you see, you damned fool?” After all Kelso did have the sense not to shout down what he had see
n, a shout which would almost certainly be heard by the Passe Partout, which was being waved—thank goodness for that!—to the starboard side by Orsini, who was standing on the taffrail, holding on to one of the poop lanterns and using the speaking-trumpet to shout his shrill French.

  “I had a good look at ‘im, sor,” Kelso said, unsure whether he should report to Southwick, Aitken or Ramage, who were now gathered round him in a group.

  “You did, eh?” Ramage said to get the man’s attention before the poor fellow’s head swivelled off. “And what did you make of her?”

  “Scunner-rigged, goes to windward like a round shot, an’ got every stitch o’ canvas set, even ringtails on the main, I reckon.”

  “A schooner, eh?” Ramage said unhurriedly. “You didn’t get a sight of her flag, of course.”

  “Oh noo, sir, she’s too far away for thaat!”

  No more Devonians, Ramage swore to himself; I’ll never ship another Devonian, however fast he says he can talk.

  Southwick jabbed the man in the ribs with his forefinger. “British or Algerine?”

  “Oh, British, sir,” Kelso said at once. “I reckon I recognize her, too, unless someone’s copying her style o’ paintwork.”

  “Well?” Southwick demanded.

  “She’s the old Magpie, used to sail out o’ Brixham. I was a privateersman afore the press took me up, an’ she was m’ first ship after the war begun. Her hull, y’ carn’t mistake it: alternate strakes o’ black and white, carried well up under the run.”

  “M’sieu! M’sieu!”

  It was Orsini, shouting to draw his attention and gesticulating over the starboard side. And there Ramage could see over the bulwarks the upper part of the Passe Partout’s lateen sail only a few feet away, a great bird’s wing of canvas.

  He had only a moment to make up his mind as he absorbed the situation. The Magpie might already be attacking the convoy, but whatever she was doing she must be sent off—preferably happy at saying goodbye to the pick of fifteen enemy ships. But in this wind a frigate so obviously French as the Calypso could not get within five miles of a fore-and-aft rigged vessel like a schooner, and what would the convoy think of a French frigate talking to a British privateer instead of trying to sink her? The Passe Partout was close alongside, racing along as only a tartane or a xebec could in this breeze.