Ramage's Signal r-11 Read online

  William Stafford, a Cockney able seaman working abreast the foremast, waved his hand, dismissing the whole thing. 'It's very windy 'ere; comes roarin' acrorst that plain from the mountings. They put up the wall to protect the 'uts.'

  The Italian seaman, Alberto Rossi, laughed derisively. 'Is a good idea, Staff, but the torre is not between the huts and the plain. Is to one side.'

  'And it's made of wood; I heard Mr Aitken say so', Jackson added.

  'Well, it's tall enough, Jacko', Stafford persisted.

  'It has shutters that open and close like windows', Jackson said. 'Used for semaphore. I heard them say that, too.' As the captain's coxswain and an American who had served in the Royal Navy for years, even though he had a Protection in his seabag declaring his nationality that would secure his freedom whenever he presented it to an American consul, he was treated as the leader of a small group of seamen who had served with the captain since he was a junior lieutenant.

  'What good are windows?' Rossi demanded.

  'How the devil do I know', Jackson said amiably, keeping an eye on the bosun, who would be along in a few minutes to inspect the brasswork which he was polishing with brickdust. 'I've never seen one of those things before.'

  'Seems funny, just one put up on this bit o' the coast', Stafford said. 'What's semifour mean, anyway?'

  'Semaphore', Jackson corrected. 'I'm not sure. Something to do with signalling, I think.'

  'Don't see no flags', Stafford persisted.

  'That's the reason for the shutters, I expect', Jackson said. 'Opening some, closing others - that'd make patterns meaning different things.'

  'Semaphore: it is from the Greek', a young midshipman said in near perfect English. 'It means - well, sema is "a sign", and phew "to bear". A sign-bearer.'

  'Oh', Stafford said, 'I thought it was the number four. Like four shutters, or somefing. I say, Mr Orsini, 'ow many languages do you talk?'

  'Well, I had to learn Latin and Greek. Italian is my native language and anyway is very like Latin. Spanish - that's like Italian too, and French.'

  'And English', Stafford added. 'That makes six!'

  The young midshipman, fourteen years old but tall, with straight black hair, a sallow skin and hooked nose, flushed with embarrassment.

  'It is not as you think. My tutor, he made me study Latin, Greek, French, but at home we speak - we used to speak', he corrected himself, 'English and Spanish. I have Spanish relatives', he said.

  'And the Marchesa?' Jackson asked. 'She speaks them too?'

  Paolo Orsini nodded matter-of-factly. 'Her French is better than mine. She hated the French ambassador.'

  The three seamen waited expectantly, but Orsini obviously did not consider any further explanation necessary.

  'Hated him, sir?' Jackson ventured.

  'Oh, not just one but all of them. The last one sent by Louis XVI, and then the two from the Directory. The first of them she declared persona non grata - some affair of him stealing Court cutlery at one of her receptions - and his replacement was, how do you say, a boor.'

  'Yes, they're all boars and should be kept in sties', Stafford said sympathetically, 'but why did it make your aunt improve her French?'

  'Oh yes', Orsini said, pausing a moment as he worked out Stafford's error, 'my aunt occasionally had to talk to the French ambassador, and in the world of diplomacy the language is French. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of hearing her make a mistake.'

  'Cor, French eh?' exclaimed Stafford. 'It oughta be English. Lot of double meanings, that's all French is.'

  'That's why governments use it', Jackson said. 'Now look sharp, 'cos here comes the bosun.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Paolo Orsini had come off watch. He could now be in his berth sleeping, but it was a glorious day and because this was apart of the coast he had never seen before he had come up on deck to look. And he had listened to the talk of the tower with fascination. Semaphore!

  He was very familiar with the thick-walled towers built two hundred years ago by the Spaniards along the Tuscan coast and many other places. They were signal towers and watch towers, some round, some square, each within sight of another, so that a fire of brushwood - usually from olive trees which burned readily and with intense flames - lit in a brazier on top would be seen in a moment; within twenty minutes a warning could be passed a hundred miles along a coast. They were admittedly just towers, with walls ten feet thick. These semaphore towers that the captain had been discussing with the first lieutenant and Southwick were something quite different.

  What exactly was 'semaphore'? He knew the Greek derivation but had no idea what use the French were making of it. At that moment he heard his name being hailed from the quarterdeck rail and saw that the first lieutenant was down from aloft. Accidente, he had no hat, his shirt was grubby, his breeches stained by that oaf of a boy spilling the apology for stew that had masqueraded as a meal. But it was the first lieutenant hailing, and he had only slightly more patience than the captain.

  There were times, he thought crossly, as he made for the quarterdeck ladder, when he could not understand why his aunt had fallen in love with Captain Ramage. Then, to be fair, when he recalled seeing her in some of her regal rages in the palace at Volterra, he could not understand why Captain Ramage had fallen in love with her. Anyway, with her now a refugee from her kingdom of Volterra and living in England with the captain's parents, at least she had to be patient.

  'Ah, Mr Orsini, how kind of you to come along.'

  'Aye aye, sir.' It was best to humour the captain when he was in one of these sarcastic moods.

  'Cast your eye, Mr Orsini, upon the slate which Mr Southwick is holding, and tell me what you think it represents.'

  The first lieutenant, lieutenant of Marines, master and captain: four pairs of eyes were watching him as he tried to make sense out of the small squares and lines marked on the slate. It looked like a maze. A puzzle. A diagram - yes, but of what?

  'Come now, Mr Orsini, time flies, and your hesitation hardly flatters the person who drew the diagram.'

  That was the first lieutenant, who had been at the maintopmasthead. Ah! That was the clue.

  'II semaforo, commandante!'

  Ramage said: 'Be more exact.'

  'That French camp, sir: the huts are here' - he indicated the five rectangles - 'and this line is the wall.'

  'The wall? II muro? Do you know what un semaforo is?'

  Sheepishly Paolo shook his head. 'No, sir, I was guessing.'

  'Well, it's like patterns on playing cards: each has a separate meaning. With that kind' - he nodded towards the tower, now well past on the starboard quarter - 'there are a series of white shutters, like windows. You open some and close others so you make patterns, like rearranging the black-and-white squares on a chess board, and someone at a distance using a telescope can "read" it and understand your message. Of course, he has to have the same signal book as you, giving him the key to the meanings.'

  'Yes, sir.' It was so obvious; he should have guessed. But where was the next tower? And the last one? How far could they see from one tower to another? Where did a message come from, and go to? And why was the Calypso not attacking this tower? Surely tearing down one tower would have the same effect as cutting a signal halyard?

  Paolo realized that in the last few moments all the ship's officers had arrived on the quarterdeck, and it gave him some satisfaction that Kenton, the second lieutenant, and Martin, the third, were even more puzzled than he had been.

  'Mr Southwick will take over as officer of the deck; the rest of you come down to my cabin. Bring the slate.'

  As soon as he was sitting at his desk, with his officers perched on the settee and Aitken occupying the only armchair, Ramage said: 'You've been bored since we captured the bomb ketches, and have to stand an extra watch while Wagstaffe takes our frigate prize to Gibraltar. I'm sorry I couldn't keep the bomb ketches as toys for you, but you saw how slow they were, so there was no choice but to scuttl
e them.'

  'That seemed to change our luck, sir', Aitken said ruefully.

  'Yes. Here we are with orders to attack anything we can find, no British admiral within a thousand miles, and all we see are a few small coasting vessels carrying grain, almonds, rice, casks of wine, olive oil, salt fish and meat. Nothing worth sending in as a prize.'

  'So that was why you decided to leave the Italian coast and try the coasts of France and Spain, sir?' Aitken asked.

  'Yes. What advantage have we, Martin?'

  He liked springing questions on his younger officers; it made sure they stayed awake, and, more important, kept them thinking ahead.

  'Well, sir, the Calypso being French built and still using French-cut sails, it means we can keep close in with the coast and the Frogs think she's one of theirs.'

  'And the disadvantage?'

  Martin looked puzzled but Orsini asked permission to speak, and said: 'It isn't worth sinking these little tartanes and xebecs because that would reveal we are a sheep in wolfs - no, I mean wolf in a sheepskin.'

  'Exactly', Ramage said, 'but as Mr Aitken will probably agree, although we have no choice, it's an appalling waste of the kind of orders we dream about.'

  'Aye, in a day or so I'll be suggesting we sail into Toulon and attack the French fleet.'

  Ramage nodded. 'In the meantime we might attack this semaphore station.'

  Aitken, still holding the slate, slowly uncrossed his legs and said warily, knowing by now to be watchful of his captain when he was in a bantering mood: 'I've been thinking about that, sir.'

  'Go on', Ramage said, sensing the first lieutenant's embarrassment.

  'Well, sir, doesn't the same thing apply? I mean, we're leaving the small coasting vessels alone in the hope of finding better prizes, but knocking down a semaphore tower - well, it . . .'

  'It raises the alarm without giving us a decent reward', Ramage finished the sentence for him.

  'Yes, sir.'

  'But, my dear Aitken, we need neither knock down the tower nor raise the alarm. Why, in half an hour we'll be out of sight from the tower, even if anyone is watching us, which I doubt.'

  'Then how are -'

  'Give me your slate', Ramage said, reaching up for a chart, which he unrolled and held flat with his stone weights. 'Now, gather round, all of you.'

  He put his finger on a section of the coast. 'You see this large bay, a perfect half moon, sheltered from all winds between southeast and southwest by way of north. It deserves to be better known. Now, here inside the eastern end and a mile or so inland is the village of Foix. Out on the end of the point is the semaphore tower and the little barracks.

  'Now, look at the western side of the bay. No villages until you get to Aspet, twelve miles round the coast but only eight as the crow flies across the water from the semaphore tower at Foix. And what do you notice about Aspet, Mr Martin?'

  'It's almost at the end of the headland at the other end of the bay, sir.'

  'And, Mr Orsini?'

  'That's where the next semaphore tower will be, sir.'

  'I hope so', Ramage said. 'We'll soon see. And once we sight the tower at Aspet, we'll alter course for Minorca.'

  Martin was just about to exclaim 'Minorca!' when he noticed that Aitken was using the dividers to measure the distances from Aspet back to Foix. Quite what that had to do with Minorca, Martin could not understand, but he had the wit to realize that one could also phrase the question another way - what had Minorca to do with Aspet and Foix? Then he realized that the distant island was a likely destination for a French frigate; no coastal lookout would be at all surprised to see the Calypso bearing away in that direction.

  Deciding that he would not speak unless in answer to a question - that was the safest way of not making a fool of himself - Martin watched the captain, who was now looking at the drawing on the slate which Aitken had put down on one side of the desk.

  It was curious how His Lordship (Martin still worried about referring to him as the captain, which he was, or His Lordship, which he was also, even though everyone said he did not use his title) looked at the slate and then the chart, then at Rennick and then back to the chart, without moving his head. His face was deeply suntanned and lean, his cheekbones high and his nose hooked, but the eyes were what attracted attention: they were brown and deep set, almost hooded, so that as he stood looking down at the chart Martin was put in mind of a hawk he had once watched closely as it sat on a bough: it did not move its head but the eyes missed nothing.

  Yet, Martin realized with a shock, the captain was only six years older than himself: until the birthday a couple of weeks ago he had assumed Mr Ramage was - well, approaching forty, and was startled to discover he was not yet thirty. He did not look forty, or even thirty; it was simply that to have crammed so much action into so few years meant that Captain Ramage was still alive only because of a series of miracles. The hair had just grown back on that tiny bare patch on his head where he had been wounded in the West Indies - taking a Dutch island, Curaçao wasn't it? - although the left arm obviously still gave him trouble: he sometimes held it awkwardly, as though the elbow was stiff with rheumatism.

  He saw Ramage point to some soundings marked on the chart, and Aitken wrote them in on the slate. The bay in fact was quite shallow: six and seven fathoms in the centre, but a gradual shoaling up to the beach probably indicated that the sand went well out. The wind was northeast, so it would be calm enough in there.

  Martin nodded with the rest of them when Ramage asked casually: 'You all have the details in your memories?'

  Then Ramage said: 'Before I roll this chart up and put it away, can you remember enough to take in a boat tonight, with no moon, and land it fifty yards to the west of the tower, on the bay side of the headland?'

  Several sheepish 'Well sirs ...' had Ramage sitting down in his chair again and twisting the chart round for them all, grouped in the front of the desk, to study it more easily.

  'Take as long as you need', Ramage said. 'If anyone wants to make notes or copy anything, here is pen and paper.' He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of ink, pen and a pad.

  As he looked at the group, Ramage suddenly had an idea which seemed so absurd that for a moment he thought he was just daydreaming. Then he thought about it again with deliberate concentration. It still seemed absurd, but a faint possibility of it working emerged like a drowning man waving a hand. He drove it out of his mind for a full minute, then let it back and considered it for a third time. Even limited success would need a great deal of luck, but there was one important factor in its favour - complete failure neither endangered the Calypso nor her disguise, nor killed a lot of men. That was a rare situation; probably sufficient to justify an attempt.

  Well, even his first plan, which he was about to describe to these men, had an air of absurdity about it. The second - really only the second part of the first - he would keep to himself for the time being. A few hours spent mulling it over would either improve it or reveal some drawback, when he would quietly forget the whole thing.

  Aitken was now back in his chair; Kenton folded a sheet sf paper on which he had made notes, carefully wiped the tip of the quill and put the cap back on the inkwell; Rennick read through some notes and Martin crouched down on one knee to look at both chart and diagram for a sea-level view, or rather to see the view he would get from the thwart of a boat. Paolo stared for a few more moments, as though lost in thought, and then sat down.

  Ramage looked round at the five of them and said casually: 'There's likely to be a garrison of twenty-five to thirty men at Foix. Probably the same at all the signal stations, so there's no advantage in attacking another one in preference to this. In fact this one has several advantages, hasn't it, Rennick?'

  'Yes, sir. Sandy beach, so the boats can land without making a lot of noise.' He was grateful to the captain for that casual mention because Aitken looked surprised - obviously, the Marine considered, the first lieutenant had not thought of it. 'It's con
veniently placed so we could draw a detailed plan of the position of the buildings and be fairly sure what they're used for. We can see they have no great guns, so there'll be only a normal guard with muskets. It is too far from the village for any general alarm to be raised, and the only road in is likely to be on the landward side of the camp, so the sentry will be there.'

  Ramage nodded. Rennick had given the soldier's point of view; a sailor would add that a frigate could come into the bay towing her boats and anchor, reducing the distance the landing party would have to be rowed. And since they had no idea of the absurd second half of his plan - in the last few minutes he had decided to attempt it - they could not appreciate the greatest advantage of all.

  'Very well, we'll say a garrison of thirty. It hardly matters but I am assuming they have six signalmen working two watches during daylight, so they'll be off watch and asleep when we arrive. Cook, carpenter's mate, various petty officers and a commanding officer - he'll probably be aretired or disabled naval lieutenant - and the rest of the garrison supplying sentries.'

  He picked up the quill and scribbled on the pad. 'Our two cutters carry sixteen men each for cutting out, so your Marines, Rennick, can be split between those two boats. We'll row six men in each, Mr Aitken, so we have a dozen seamen available once the cutters are beached.'

  'Commanding the cutters, sir?' Aitken asked.

  'Kenton can take one, Martin the other.' He saw Paolo's face fall. And Aitken, too, was nodding in the businesslike manner which Ramage recognized as his way of hiding disappointment.

  'You will command the Calypso, Mr Aitken, and you must be ready to deal with thirty or so French prisoners. I will take my gig, rowing eight oars, with a cutting-out party of sixteen seamen, in case Rennick needs a hand. Not with the attack' he added tactfully, 'but in getting the prisoners into the boats. Mr Orsini can command the gig.'