Ramage's Signal Page 16

  Only by beating to windward, away from the Calypso, could the Passe Partout escape. Would the Magpie continue chasing her? If so, it would keep her out of the Calypso’s hands but—ironically enough—save the French convoy.

  The fifth swivel fired. It was absurd to waste the shot when the whole point of firing was to make smoke to attract the Calypso’s attention because at this range a three-pounder shot would not harm a privateer schooner any more than a soggy dumpling.

  “Fire blank charges,” Ramage shouted. “Don’t waste shot. Just make smoke!”

  He looked astern across the convoy at the Calypso and just managed to steady the glass in time to see the frigate wearing round, sails shivering as she steadied on a course hard on the wind. Aitken and Southwick were going to be busy as they tacked back and forth through the convoy. There were bound to be at least three merchant ships whose masters lost their nerve at the sight of a great frigate, guns run out, racing in their direction and, instead of holding their course, they would do something silly and risk a collision …

  “Martin,” Ramage snapped after another glance at his watch, “have another look at the Magpie’s foremasthead.”

  The degrees and minutes he reported confirmed what Ramage had already seen with his naked eye: he hardly needed the quadrant to tell him that the angle subtended by the Magpie’s foremasthead was increasing so fast that the schooner would be ranging alongside within minutes.

  He glanced at Rossi, who was loosing a powerful stream of blasphemy in Italian at the Magpie such as can be achieved only by an imaginative Italian Catholic.

  “Very hard on Catholics, these Arabs,” Ramage said teasingly. “They flay them, I believe.”

  Rossi grinned as he said: “Yes, sir, even lapsed Catholics.”

  The Genoese seaman was handling the Passe Partout’s tiller as an artist might his brush; he was responsive to every variation in the wind’s strength, reacting to puffs and lulls, like a gull hovering over the edge of a cliff.

  Martin turned to Ramage and said cheerfully: “I am sorry, sir, someone wrote andante ma non troppo on this ship’s keel!”

  Ramage gave a great gust of laughter which stopped every man in his tracks, and knowing they had very little time left for anything, Ramage called: “Mr Martin says the Passe Partout has a musical direction—an order by the composer to the soloist or orchestra—which means in Italian, ‘Fast, but not too much!’”

  “Ho, I was wondering what was delayin’ ‘er,” Stafford said.

  There were seven French prisoners locked in the fo’c’s’le and who had been guarded, until the swivels were needed, by Baxter and Johnson. He must not forget to free them at the last moment and give them, too, a chance to kill an Arab or so before that screaming horde swamped the Passe Partout’s deck.

  He turned to Rossi, waving to Martin to attend to the sheets and braces: “Bring her hard on the wind. It’s not much of a chance, but we’ll give ‘em a run for their money!”

  Within two or three minutes the tartane was heeling as she sliced through the waves, lively as a young pony let loose in a meadow. With the glass Ramage saw the men in the Magpie hauling on headsails, foresail and mainsail sheets so that the schooner could sail closer to the wind and stay in the tartane’s wake until she overhauled her.

  Martin, standing by him, commented: “They seem to be a lubberly crowd over there, sir!”

  Ramage nodded, an impression in his mind giving way to an idea. “Tell Orsini to fetch the French master here, but leave the rest of the Frenchmen locked up. Send Baxter and Johnson with him.”

  The fat Frenchman walked most of the way staring at the Magpie almost in the Passe Partout’s wake, but when he reached Ramage he held his arms out in front of him, palms facing forward.

  “What is happening?” he asked. “I hear the guns firing—but she is British, like you!”

  “She is an Algerine pirate. She was British, but the Algerines captured her.”

  “You won’t get away from her,” the Frenchman said philosophically. “We have more barnacles on the bottom than the Republic has debts. We are all making mistakes today—I mistook you for French, you mistook those villains for English. Your mistake is going to be the most expensive for all of us: if we are lucky, they’ll cut our throats. If not—well, they have many cruel games to play with ‘infidels’…”

  The Frenchman, fat as he was, and slightly ridiculous to look at, was no coward; his attitude was droll and he was genuinely amused that both he and Ramage had made mistakes over identity.

  Ramage looked astern at the Magpie, glanced at Rossi, who shook his head to indicate the Passe Partout was not gaining a yard, and said to the Frenchman: “M’sieu, I’ve no doubt you and your men share our reluctance to become prisoners of the Dey of Algiers or any of his men. If I release you all, will you give me your word that you’ll remain our prisoners at large, help us, and surrender yourselves again when we have escaped?”

  “Escaped? Quelle blague!” he exclaimed at such crazy talk. “But certainly we will help make those camel-lovers pay dearly for our skins. Yes, you have our parole; we’ll help you sail and fight the ship—whatever you propose to do. Fight against all that mob!” The notion made him chuckle as he made his way forward to explain to his men, and Ramage called Baxter and Johnson aft as he told Martin what he was doing.

  “I’m glad they’ll be helping with the sheets and downhauls, sir,” Martin admitted. “This rig is effective, I’ll admit that, but it’s as tricky as a Thames barge. A man and a boy can work a barge up a narrow gut against a foul tide—as long as they know how!”

  “Orsini,” Ramage said, “I’m putting you in charge of the Frenchmen because you’ll hear me giving orders in English and can translate.”

  “Aye aye, sir. And sir,” he reminded Ramage, as if to excuse his future behaviour, “the Saraceni have been the natural enemies of Italians for centuries.”

  Ramage remembered how the various Arab rulers of Algiers and Tunis along the north coast of Africa had always made passing ships pay enormous “tributes,” quite apart from capturing hundreds of seamen to work the oars of their galleys. “Yes, they’ve lacked friends for a long time,” he said dryly. “They have some curious habits.”

  “The Magpie, sir,” Martin said as he put his quadrant away in its box, having carefully wiped spray from the brass fittings. “She’s catching up very fast!”

  “Ah, there are your Frenchmen,” Ramage told Orsini. “Tell the master to show you where their muskets and pistols are kept, and then make sure his men have them.”

  The wind was piping up; it was now a fresh breeze, cooling the decks a little, and increasing the belly of the sail. The Magpie, he had to admit, looked a fine sight, although he would be quite satisfied if he could admire her a mile away, instead of a few hundred yards.

  The Algerines were obviously going to pass to leeward and give the Passe Partout a broadside; then they would probably drop astern and come up again on the weather side and board. There must be a couple of hundred of them, judging from the crowd lining the weather rail, and, he suspected, by habit they were acting as human ballast, as they would in a xebec or tartane.

  The French master came waddling aft, and suddenly held out his hand. “Chesneau,” he said. “Albert Chesneau.”

  Ramage shook it and introduced himself, giving his name the English pronunciation. Chesneau did not hear it clearly because at that moment the tiller creaked louder than usual, so Ramage repeated it with the French pronunciation.

  “Ramage—the Ramage?” Chesneau was obviously impressed. “Ha, I’ve heard of you and I’ve said a few prayers that I’d never meet you at sea. I imagined different circumstances!”

  By now Orsini was leading the French seamen from the cabin and they were busy checking over muskets and pistols. Ramage looked round for Martin.

  “Listen, this ship should have been your command and I’m sorry to be interfering, but the next half an hour is likely to be busy, so I’ll give you
a hand. Orsini can use those Frenchmen like Marines, and their muskets will help. I want you to look after the sail-handling. I suggest you put Jackson in charge of the swivels. Leave Rossi at the tiller, and I’ll give him a hand if he needs it.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Martin said and then looked almost shy. “Will you pardon me for saying it, sir, we all know the Magpie’s going to do us in, but it’s an honour to be beside you, sir, and none of us would be anywhere else.”

  Suddenly all the men round gave a cheer which was swamped by a bellow from Baxter: “Three cheers an’ a tiger for ‘is Lordship—’ip ‘ip, ‘urray!”

  An embarrassed Ramage stood still until they had finished, then gave the men a salute in reply and a grin of encouragement.

  “Right lads, I’ve a deal of paperwork to finish in the Calypso, so let’s hurry up and finish off this bird astern!”

  The men roared with laughter, Orsini hastily translating for the Frenchmen.

  “Remember this,” Ramage shouted to make himself heard above the increasing wind and the laughter, “that schooner is expecting to give us a broadside or two and then board.

  “Now you know that, forget it. Forget everything except the job you now have. Men at the sheets, braces and downhauls: that’s your entire life for the next half an hour—if you want to live. You men at the swivels—fire as fast as you can but as accurately as possible. Your target will always be the Magpie’s quarterdeck if your gun will bear, otherwise her topmasts.”

  He lapsed into French. “You new allies are the sharpshooters. Try and pick off the magpies and jackdaws on the quarterdeck, particularly anyone that looks like an officer.”

  He looked at the Magpie and realized that the new sound of popping was musket fire from the Arabs swarming out along the Magpie’s bowsprit and, he noted, getting in each other’s way. She was less than a hundred yards astern and spray was slicing up from her bow as she raced up to the Passe Partout.

  “One last thing,” Ramage shouted, “and make sure you translate this, Orsini: don’t waste a single shot. Aim and fire. If you can’t aim properly, wait for a target to present itself.”

  The Calypso had tacked again, weaving in and out of the ships of the convoy. Neither Aitken nor Southwick would ever guess what he was originally going to try to do with that damned convoy, and if they had any sense they would grab the Sarazine and Golondrina and make for Gibraltar.

  Southwick would eventually visit Gianna, of course, and he would tell her what little he had seen of the last few minutes of her sweetheart and her heir, and Jackson, Rossi and Stafford. She would mourn but she would be proud, even if the Admiralty made a fuss about him leaving the ship.

  He mopped his face with his handkerchief, not because he was dripping with perspiration but because he wanted to wipe away the black thoughts. And, being human, he could be permitted some black thoughts when nine Britons and six Frenchmen in a tiny tartane found themselves about to be boarded by a schooner crowded with a couple of hundred Algerine pirates, whose shrill shouts and screams he could now hear, a noise of wild animals—how he imagined wolves chased their quarry.

  He looked around the Passe Partout. The six swivels were loaded; men stood at them with linstocks round which were wound smoking slowmatch. The Frenchmen were settling themselves down in comfortable corners with their muskets, arranging powder, shot and rammers to hand.

  Chesneau, having talked to each of his men, was now waddling aft to join Ramage and Rossi right aft. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the Magpie. “The owners of that schooner allow the captain even less paint than mine do for the Passe Partout!”

  “I don’t think they’ve had her long,” Ramage said. “You see she has damage down the larboard side? I think that was done when they captured her from the British.”

  Chesneau shivered. “I hope your countrymen had quick deaths; otherwise they are still chained in the galleys.”

  “You do not have the build for rowing,” Ramage said, “so perhaps we had better not be captured.”

  “I would kiss the Pope’s ring and never dodge another tax to avoid that,” Chesneau said, “but our fate is only a couple of ship’s lengths astern now.”

  “Yes,” Ramage said, looking round at Rossi, who was watching the leech of the Passe Partout’s sail, a cheerful grin on his face as Stafford shouted some teasing obscenity at him.

  “You are very calm, M’sieu Ramage; you even smile.”

  “I’m smiling because I am about to do something of which I do not entirely approve, M’sieu Chesneau.”

  “Indeed? You’ve left it late in life to acquire a new bad habit!” The Magpie was perhaps forty yards astern now and the black marks appearing in the Passe Partout’s sail were being made by musket balls.

  “It may not be a bad habit; it’s just one I avoid as much as possible.”

  “You intrigue me. What are you going to do, M’sieu Ramage?”

  “Gamble, M’sieu Chesneau: Les jeux sont faits!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ADMITTEDLY it was a bet for which he would be hard put to find a taker, whether among the bookies on New-market Heath or the pallid gamblers at White’s or Brooks’s or Boodle’s. He was betting the life of the fifteen motley crew of the Passe Partout on a single chance: that the couple of hundred or so Algerines who had captured the Magpie only a few weeks ago were still bewildered; that the towering masts and running and standing rigging of a gaff-rigged topsail schooner was such a complex mass of spars and rope, to men used to simple lateen sails hoisted on stubby masts, that they were certainly unused to it and probably still nervous.

  He stood close to Rossi and gave his instructions. The tip of the Magpie’s flying jib-boom was less than forty yards astern; the musket balls were beginning to rattle and Jackson, having been warned by Ramage, was waiting the signal to fire his swivels into the screaming and gibbering mass of Arabs on the Magpie’s bow while Orsini held back his Frenchmen.

  “This ship,” Ramage said to Chesneau in a conversational tone, “she handles easily?”

  “Like a dancer,” the fat man said. He was pale now and perspiring but Ramage sensed it was due to more of a feeling of helplessness than fear.

  Thirty yards to the tip of the Magpie’s jib-boom, and it would be only a matter of moments before some of the Passe Partouts were hit by musket balls.

  Ramage pointed at Jackson. “Fire, when you’re ready!”

  He pointed at Orsini and repeated the order.

  The guns thundered out at twenty yards: by the time the smoke cleared it was ten yards, the great jib-boom high above them.

  Then he turned to Rossi. “Round we go!” and with that helped the Italian push the big tiller over to larboard so that the Passe Partout suddenly turned to starboard, jinking right across the Magpie’s bow and missing the jib-boom by only a yard or so. Chesneau, the moment he saw what they were doing, jumped over to add his weight to the leverage on the rudder and as Ramage tried to look over his shoulder at the Magpie, he saw the great schooner with its towering masts and topmasts already passing astern, at right angles to the Passe Partout’s course. As her quarterdeck raced by, the tartane’s swivels were grunting again and spurting smoke, slamming three-pounder round shot across her decks while the unhurried firing of muskets showed that the Frenchmen were picking their targets.

  The Passe Partout’s sheets were eased as Martin hurried his men to trim the sail on the new course, with the wind now broad on the larboard quarter.

  Ramage stood back from the tiller, saw the lateen sail bellying nicely, noticed that Jackson’s swivel gunners were already sponging and ramming, and saw the Frenchmen hurriedly reloading their muskets as they scrambled into positions from which they could fire at the Magpie when she turned after them.

  The schooner herself, Ramage then realized, had been taken completely by surprise: not one of her broadside guns had fired as she raced across the Passe Partout’s stern—yet she should have given the tartane a devastating raking broadside: tha
t had seemed to Ramage his greatest danger when he weighed up the idea several minutes ago.

  But now the schooner was beginning to turn; already her masts were separating as she turned to starboard to wear round after the Passe Partout, but even as she turned Ramage felt something clutch at his heart, because she was a beautiful vessel.

  The wheel had obviously been put over and the great ship was turning on her heel, the big booms slamming over from the starboard side to the larboard as she began to come round after the tartane and her stern passed through the eye of the wind.

  But in their excitement the Algerines had not cast off the running backstays; the booms had swung across only a short distance before jamming hard up against them, and the ship continued turning so the wind filling the sails exerted enormous pressure on the booms and through the booms on to the running backstays.

  Ramage looked aloft. From the running backstays the pressure was, of course, spreading to the masts, to which the stays were secured, and he could now see that her rigging was slack—or, rather, the result of months of scorching sun drying and stretching it and rain shrinking it. The Algerines, he was sure, had not set up the rigging from the day they captured her.

  The fools had gybed her all standing, the fear of all seamen in fore-and-aft rigged vessels, and suddenly the ship seemed to vanish. One moment the sails were there, great billowing masses of canvas distorted by the hard lines of the ropes into which they were being pressed, and the next moment they had disappeared. Instead there was a long, low hulk wallowing in the water, covered with canvas like a shroud, which was rapidly darkening as water soaked into it.

  Ramage was puzzled as to why he had been so surprised, because the Magpie had done just what he had hoped: that was why he had taken the Passe Partout across her bow. He hoped that the Algerines, unused to the Magpie’s complex rig, would have become so excited in their chase of the tartane that when the Passe Partout suddenly jinked across her bow like a hare being chased by hounds they would spin the wheel over and forget to let go the running backstays on one side and take them up on the other.