Ramage's Signal Page 19

  “And for our purposes not too many villages or towers overlooking the anchorage,” Southwick said.

  “None that need bother us,” Ramage agreed. “I haven’t been in here for ten years or more, but last time there were a few fishermen living in huts, a tower or two and churches, and a Roman acropolis. They fish for tunny. Anyway, they need not concern us. Now, with our topgallants drawing we should be pulling ahead of the convoy, and because each master knows we are making for the Golfo di Palmas, that’ll seem natural enough: they can see land ahead and those who could be bothered to take the sun’s meridian passage will know that it is the right spot.”

  “I wonder where they think the convoy is going to after that,” Rennick said in an elaborately casual voice, obviously hoping to draw a hint from Ramage.

  “Once they’ve rounded Capo Spartivento the whole of the eastern Mediterranean is open to them,” Ramage said blandly. “Venice, Ragusa, the Morea, Constantinople, Egypt …”

  Rennick grinned and said: “Which would you choose, sir?”

  “For a visit in time of peace? Venice, Constantinople … scores of places.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I meant, sir.”

  “I know,” Ramage said, “but I’m making you add patience to your long list of virtues.”

  He picked up Orsini’s list of ships and the sheet of paper on which he had made an estimate of the number of their crews.

  Now is the moment, he told himself. You can give one of two sets of orders to these men. One will result in a small but certain victory; the other gives a chance of a very much larger one. But only a chance; a chance in which he could take no precautions against things like a random sighting at sea, a night of gale … And the question the Admiral at Gibraltar—or the

  Admiralty, since he was sailing under Admiralty orders—would ask was why he did not take the smaller assured victory.

  “Under Admiralty orders”—it meant, in a case like this, so much more than just receiving orders direct from their Lordships. When a captain acting on orders from an admiral captured a prize, the admiral received an eighth of the prize-money, which had to come out of the total shared by the captain, officers and ship’s company.

  However, if a captain and his ships were sailing “under Admiralty orders,” when they captured a prize they shared nothing with any admiral—with no one, in fact, except the prize agent. Not unnaturally the Admiralty were always on the watch for a captain abusing this situation. It was an obvious temptation for some captains. However, his father, one of the most intelligent admirals serving the Navy, although eventually his career was ruined when he became a political scapegoat, had once said to him: “Always aim at a complete victory. Remember that a battle half won is a battle half lost. A man losing a leg doesn’t say he’s half lame.”

  Rennick was examining the chart for forts and fields of fire, and seeing what landing beaches there were in the gulf, while Aitken was noting the soundings in the gulf itself, and between Sant’ Antioco and San Pietro and the mainland, which formed a much smaller but obviously good anchorage.

  Southwick, who had already spent a long time examining the chart and had inspected each copy made by Orsini for the French masters and delivered to them the first day out of Foix, waited patiently for the Captain to begin.

  Finally Rennick looked up at Ramage, and then Aitken said: “It certainly is a fine anchorage, sir. Room enough for a fleet and you can get in or out in almost any wind: a little like Falmouth but without that narrow entrance. Well, sir … ?”

  In his imagination Ramage saw the letter written by the Secretary to the Board, with its stylized beginning, “I am commanded by their Lordships …” and he could hear a man walking with a wooden leg.

  He sat down at the desk and motioned the others to make themselves comfortable on the settee and the one armchair. Then he thought for a moment. Whatever he did, Kenton and Martin were involved, but Southwick, whether he liked it or not, was going to have to stay with the Calypso.

  “You’d better relieve Kenton,” Ramage said to Southwick, “and tell Martin to come down, too.”

  An hour later he was standing at the quarterdeck rail with Southwick, examining with his telescope the hilly land ahead of them.

  “That’s Sant’ Antioco island,” Ramage said. “It’s difficult to distinguish from the hills behind, but check the peaks against the chart as I call them out.

  “The highest is in the middle of the island. That’ll be Perdas de Foga. Nearly nine hundred feet, isn’t it?”

  “According to this chart, sir.”

  “At the south end of the island there are three more peaks, the middle one being the highest. That’ll be Monte Arbus, I take it.”

  Southwick grunted agreement.

  “Now, there’s a pointed peak at the north end of the island. Scrocca Manu, eh?”

  “If that’s how you pronounce it,” Southwick grumbled. “About five hundred feet. It all fits.”

  Ten minutes later, Ramage again put the glass to his eye.

  “Ah, Southwick. The north end of Sant’ Antioco—are you ready with the chart? Good. There’s a small town there with a tall, white, circular tower. A hundred feet high, I should think. And—yes, a church with a white cupola.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Southwick said matter-of-factly. “It’s Calasetta, but you’re wrong about the tower, it’s only 95 feet. By the way, off the south end of the island, a couple of miles or so—”

  “Yes, the land of Sant’ Antioco comes down low there, and then there’s a very small island, steep-to but high.”

  “That’s it: Isolotto la Vacca.”

  “Now, the island to the north of Sant’ Antioco, Isola San Pietro. Not much to see—seems fairly low, plenty of trees. Olives and figs, and I can pick out some vine terraces. The south end looks like salt pans. Wait—yes, on the mainland beyond, I can see another big tower. Octagonal—at least, not round. Very prominent.”

  “That’s at Portoscuso, sir. How about looking down to the south, at the southern end of the Golfo di Palmas?”

  “Well, on the mainland in line with the south end of Sant’ Antioco there are various hills inland, but it begins with a white sand beach, then what looks like marshes. That must be the north side of Porto Pino?”

  “Seems so from this chart, sir.”

  “Then as you trend south there’s a headland with—yes, a tower on top. Too far off to see shape and colour; in fact it looks like a tree stump!”

  “That’ll be the tower on the north side of Cala Piombo, sir, 633 feet high. If we get strong nor’easters or sou’easters, that’s the anchorage for us. Good holding in six to ten fathoms, the chart says; I’ve a special note on it.”

  “Well,” Ramage said, shutting the telescope, “let’s hope we get fine weather so we can stay out of the Cala Piombo.”

  “It’s an odd sort of name,” Southwick said. He paused and then gave a sniff. “Still, I can’t think why we’d ever want to be down that end of the gulf.”

  “Piombo is Italian for lead,” Ramage said. “I wonder who built the tower …”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE MOMENT the Calypso was anchored in the lee of Sant’ Antioco, Rennick had his men drawn up in the waist with the sergeant checking their pistols and cutlasses while Aitken attended to hoisting out the boats. Fortunately the frigate was lying with her head to the north-west, so that her starboard side was for the time being hidden from any ships entering the bay. Which, the First Lieutenant thought to himself, was just as well.

  A frigate carried six boats, two (usually the cutters) secured in quarter davits and the other four stowed on deck amidships with the spare yards and booms. When she anchored, normally the two quarter-boats were lowered—the first one away traditionally carrying the master or bosun in a circle round the ship making sure all the yards were square.

  So a frigate might have her two cutters in the water and no onlooker would be surprised; but for a frigate, or any ship-ofwar, to have
six boats in the water—that could mean one of two things: that they were all being sent off wooding and watering, and would be stowed with casks, or they were going to attack something, in which case they would be full of men.

  First Aitken had the larboard cutter, the red one, lowered and brought round to the starboard side, when the other cutter was lowered. Each one was designed to carry sixteen men for cutting-out expeditions and was rowed by six oars. The launch was then hoisted out on the stay tackle, the biggest and heaviest of the Calypso’s boats, carrying 24 armed men and rowed by eight oars. The pinnace was the next to go over the side, and like the cutters carried sixteen armed men but rowed eight oars. With the launch, the pinnace was intended for more distant expeditions. The gig, long and narrow-beamed and the fastest of them all, was hoisted out next. She could carry sixteen armed men and rowed eight oars. Finally the little jolly-boat was hoisted out—rowing four oars, she carried eight armed men.

  All the boats had been secured by painters and stern-fasts by the time Ramage came up to the entry port and said to Aitken: “The first of the merchant ships is just passing the end of Sant’ Antioco and Isolotto la Vacca, that rock south of it. She’ll be anchoring in half an hour. She’s the Sarazine, with a dozen men. You’d better take the launch, your party and a section of Marines under the sergeant.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Damn—there’s another ship just nosing round the headland. Ah, the Golondrina. I think I’ll go in the gig with Kenton to deal with her; it’s a long time since I heard Spanish spoken.”

  Aitken shouted: “Launch crew and boarders fall in beside number five gun, starboard side; green cutter’s crew and boarders to number nine gun.”

  Ramage watched Aitken and his men leave, looked round for Martin, saw him eyeing the two approaching merchant ships and called over: “You’ll recognize your ship and go off to her at the right moment. Don’t forget the signal to Southwick, otherwise you might find some round shot whistling round your ears.”

  Martin was excited and nodded his head. “Aye aye, sir. Will Orsini bring in the Passe Partout and anchor her?”

  “Yes, all being well. Don’t forget, he’s already several jumps ahead of us!”

  Martin nodded again, clearly preoccupied. Not frightened, Ramage realized, but on the verge of being overwhelmed with the apparent importance of his orders and what he thought would be the consequences of failure.

  “You and Orsini are a lucky pair,” Ramage said conversationally. “You went off comfortably to your first commands. Mine was different. I was knocked out by a splinter and woke up to find that I, the Fifth Lieutenant, was the sole surviving officer and therefore in command—of a sinking frigate being battered to pieces by a French ship of the line.”

  “I heard about that from Jackson, sir: he was with you. He said you treated it as—well, as a great joke, sir.”

  “I assure you I didn’t,” Ramage said laughing. “My head was ringing like a church bell from being knocked out.”

  “That’s one of those scars … ?”

  “The upper one,” Ramage said, automatically rubbing the scar above his right eyebrow. “Now, I think that’s your bird coming into sight, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir: if you’ll excuse me!” He gave a shout: “Red cutter party fall in here! Red cutter party to me!”

  By the time Martin had cast off with the red cutter, Kenton was calling for the gig’s crew and boarding-party and Rennick, who would be commanding the pinnace and sixteen boarders, apart from the eight oarsmen, was still inspecting his men.

  Aitken’s launch was already half a mile from the Calypso, the men rowing leisurely and not heading directly for any particular ship. Then, if anyone was watching the frigate, they would have seen the red cutter leave and row round the ship a couple of times before heading seaward. A few minutes later the pinnace came from under the Calypso’s stern and suddenly she picked up speed, Rennick calling for a fast pace, and then after a mile she slowed down to a more normal speed. Again, there was nothing very odd about that; the gig would soon be doing the same. She was a long, narrow and fast boat, and was often the private property of the captain of a ship. The gig usually had gold leaf picking out the ship’s name, and the sternsheets were either scrubbed teak, or varnished so that they and the thwarts shone like a dining-room table, and when not in use were protected from the sun’s rays by canvas covers.

  Now more merchant ships were coming into the gulf, the more careful of them with leadsmen in the chains calling out depths, though the majority of the masters obviously looked at ships like the Sarazine and Golondrina, which they knew drew much more water than they did, and steered straight for them, assuming they had kept on a straight course after rounding Sant’ Antioco.

  The Calypso’s pinnace was now rowing between the merchant ships. The Marine Lieutenant had been on enough cutting-out expeditions to be perfectly at home in the eight-oared boat, and the only thing that seemed at all strange was that all the men in her were dressed either in French uniform or ragged clothes.

  Jackson, usually Captain Ramage’s coxswain in the gig, was commanding the green cutter for the time being, and threatening the sixteen boarders and six oarsmen with dire punishment if they did not stop talking: he did not mind the teasing but he was afraid they might be overheard by someone on board one of the French ships.

  Clearly the captain of the frigate had decided to exercise all his boats’ crews—that was the opinion of the Sarazine’s master, who had just noticed three or four of them, and he was wondering how he could use the French Navy to help him with watering—there was bound to be water available somewhere in the gulf. His casks had leaked, thanks to the pounding the ship had received in the seas left over from the mistral, and he could never force his men to make do with only their daily ration of water: abetted by the mate, they simply drew more at night, when he was asleep.

  Now, however, he was faced with having to launch his own boat, which was too small to carry more than one cask, and he had plenty of work on the rigging to occupy his seven seamen without sending them off watering. So perhaps, if he could speak to one of those Navy officers, they would take a couple of casks, and … He remembered he had some bottles of manzanilla, bought cheaply in Alicante, which might help. At that moment he saw that the frigate’s launch would pass close astern, and he walked to the taffrail to give a hail.

  Ramage, sitting in the sternsheets of the gig with Kenton, said quietly: “I think the ships are used to the idea of us rowing round, so we’ll board the Golondrina now. If you go alongside to starboard, none of the others will see us.”

  The gig turned and appeared to be going close along the edge of the beach until she was almost abreast the Spanish ship, and then she turned four points to larboard, which brought the master of the ship to the bulwark to give a friendly wave.

  Ramage waved back and when the master saw the gig was coming to his ship he called for seamen to take her painter and stern-fast. As soon as the gig was alongside, Ramage scrambled on board and greeted the master cheerfully, making a joke about the privateer schooner as he went aft, so that when the master turned naturally to walk with him, his back was towards the entry port.

  “The tartane was fast,” the master said. “I could not believe my eyes when I saw those masts falling. The British must have been sleeping!”

  “She was not British,” Ramage said, touching the side of his nose mysteriously. “You did not see the affair of her flag?”

  “No, only that she had the English flag, the red one.”

  “Ah, but at the last moment she changed it! She hauled down the British flag and hoisted another …” Ramage let his voice die away mysteriously.

  “Hoisted another? What other? With whom else are we at war, señor?”

  “The crescent and star …”

  “An Algerine? Caramba! They must have captured her from the English and kept her colours!”

  “It has been done before and will be done again, I’ve n
o doubt,” Ramage said gloomily, a note of sorrow in his voice as he gave a signal to Kenton. “As you said of the privateer when she lost her mast, it is hard to believe one’s own eyes.”

  The Master found himself staring at the muzzle of a pistol with a hexagonal barrel, one of the two that he had admired when he saw the French officer wearing them with belt-hooks.

  Now the French officer had his thumb on—that click: now it was cocked! “Be careful!” the master said hastily, “do not point that pistol at me, anyone would think—”

  He broke off as he looked round and saw his ship’s company all lying flat on the deck, a man from the gig standing over each of them.

  “What is this? Have you gone mad? This is not an Algerine—nor an English ship!”

  Ramage pointed across to the Calypso. “No,” he could not resist saying, “but she is.”

  “But … but … she is French. Why, I recognize the class. And the young officer from her who brought over my orders at Foix—you are not going to tell me he was English!”

  “No, Italian, but he is an officer of the Royal Navy, as I am. I must introduce myself,” Ramage said, “and may I take it that this”—he gestured with the pistol—”is not necessary?”

  The master nodded vigorously. Ramage lowered the hammer gently and slipped the hook over his belt.

  He gave a slight bow. “Ramage—Captain Ramage, at your service.”

  “Nombre de Dios,” the master said, and sat down on the deck with a thud, his face white, his upper lip and brow beading with perspiration. “Excuse me, señor, I suddenly feel faint. I know that name.”

  “It might be someone else,” Ramage said politely, helping the man to his feet again. “Breathe deeply. It helps usually.”

  The Spaniard took a few deep breaths, exhaling, it seemed to Ramage, pure garlic.