Ramage's Signal Read online

  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 north-east, 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 of 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 conveniently 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 a retired 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.”

  He added up two columns of figures. “Yes, that gives us nearly fifty Marines and seamen available, without using boats’ crews—I hope they’re going to be busy rowing back and forth with prisoners.”

  He glanced across at Martin. “Well, you were the last to pass his examination for lieutenant, so you’ll remember what gear a boat needs when sent on ‘distant service’ …”

  It was obvious Martin could not remember and thought he was going to be asked. “A compass, sir … water … yes, and provisions …”

  “Mr Martin,” Ramage said sternly, “you wouldn’t reach the horizon. What about your spyglass, quadrant, book of tables, lead-line, grapnel, spare oars and tiller? A lanthorn and candles, tinder box, keg of water, scuttle for bread? An arms chest, flints, watch? You’ll stay behind now and write out a complete list.

  “However, I wasn’t going to ask you about ‘distant service,’ so I hope you’ve learned the lesson of never answering a question unless it is asked. You, Kenton, what do we need for tonight’s expedition?”

  “The Marines and boarding party will have their arms,” Kenton said briskly, “so each boat needs a grapnel and line, lead-line, compass, muffling for the oars, at least one axe and a maul, spare tiller, night-glass, handcuffs for prisoners … cutlasses and arms chest or skip of pistols for the oarsmen… blue lights or whatever you decide for signalling …”

  “Very good,” Ramage said. “We won’t use blue lights or rockets, though, because the wrong eyes might see them, and lanterns must be kept shielded.” He pulled his chair round so that he was facing the men directly. “Now, listen carefully. This is what we are going to do.”

  “Sir, excuse me,” Aitken interrupted with the sudden anxiety of a man afraid of forgetting something in the forthcoming bustle if he does not mention it at once. “Fever ports. Will we have any quarantine problems in Gibraltar after landing here?”

  Ramage thought hard and then took out his letter book from a drawer in the desk. He sorted through several until he found one from the port admiral in Gibraltar, informing Captain Ramage, newly arrived in the Calypso from the West Indies, that the following were fever ports, and ships from them were not to be boarded without risk of the Calypso having to serve quarantine. Ramage read through the list, which included almost all along the North African coast which had the plague or yellow fever, and several in Spain. “Cadiz, Málaga, Alicante, Cartagena … they are the only ones likely to concern us if we take prizes. Toulon is clear, otherwise Wagstaffe would find himself in trouble when he arrives at Gibraltar with our f
rigate prize, because she sailed from Toulon. Anyway, this stretch of the coast is clear.”

  He put the letter book back in the drawer and nodded at Aitken. “Thank you for reminding me. We should look silly swinging at the quarantine buoy in Algeciras Bay and just looking at Gibraltar … Now, I want the boats prepared like this …”

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY SUNSET the coastline to the north was a thin, purple band with several gold-tipped peaks to the west, flat land to the north-east—the Camargue and the marshy mouth of the Rhône—and the Alps of Provence to the east, as if balancing the Languedoc peaks at the other end of a seesaw.

  Ramage watched Southwick examine the mountains of Languedoc with his telescope and then pick up his quadrant, holding it horizontal to measure the angles between three of them and noting down the figures.

  He looked at the chart as the Master put the quadrant away in its baize-lined mahogany box and guessed he must be using Mount Caroux, a second peak just east of Montpellier which was not named, and another anonymous one (as far as the chart was concerned) north-west of Minerve.

  “Just where we wanted to be, sir,” Southwick reported.

  “Not so far from Roquefort sur Soulzon,” Ramage commented.

  “Is that so, sir?”

  “The cheese, you know.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir,” Southwick said cautiously.

  “You don’t know what the devil I’m talking about,” Ramage said, laughing. “Double Gloucester—now, you’d recognize that!”

  “Oh, you mean a cheese for eating? A French one. This—what was it you said, Rockyfour—it comes from near here?”

  “Yes, from a place up in those mountains you were looking at. Made from ewe’s milk and left in caves to age.”

  “Ewe’s milk, sir?” Southwick repeated suspiciously. He thought about it for a few moments. “I don’t think I’d fancy sheep’s milk cheese.”

  “You ought to try the Italian goat’s milk cheese—so strong that it lifts the top off your head. That’s why so many Italian men are bald and have to wear hats.”

  Southwick instinctively removed his hat and ran his fingers through his mop of white hair. “Is that so, sir? Why do they eat it, then?”

  “No, I’m only joking, but it’s strong stuff.”

  At that moment a screeching from forward revealed that the big grindstone had been brought up from below and Marines and seamen were starting to—in their words—”put a sharp” on cutlass, bayonet and tomahawk blades, and the triangular points of boarding-pikes.

  A lanky, sandy-haired seaman came up to Ramage and saluted. “Permission to collect your sword from your cabin and sharpen it, sir, and load your pistols.”

  Ramage felt guilty about both sword and pistols: they had been given to him by Gianna. The sword was a splendid example of the work of one of the best sword cutlers in London, Mr Prater at Charing Cross, and the pistols were a fine, matched pair which she had bought him from Mansfield, in Bond Street, when he was made post. But in fact he preferred to use a seaman’s cutlass and have a pair of heavy Sea Service pistols hanging at his waist by their belt-hooks. Sword blades could shatter; a pistol once fired was often flung at the enemy’s head as a last resort. He might hesitate for a second if he used Gianna’s gifts—and a second could make all the difference between life and death. But the landing? This was a time when he could use them, and he realized that Jackson thought the same. The American seaman had been with him several years and had an uncanny knack of reading his Captain’s thoughts—uncanny because sometimes he seemed to anticipate what the Captain would decide before Ramage had even considered the point.

  “Ah, you consider this a good occasion to give the Marchesa’s presents an airing?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jackson said firmly. “Knowing her, I reckon the next time she sees you she’s going to want to know how many Frogs you’ve spitted with the sword and shot with the pistols, and, beggin’ your pardon, sir, you ain’t much of a hand at telling lies. Leastways, not to the Marchesa.”

  “You flatter me,” Ramage said ironically, but Southwick, who had overheard the conversation and knew Gianna almost as well as Jackson, said firmly: “He’s right, sir. The Marchesa’s bound to want to know, and she’ll be hurt if you tell her a tale.”

  “So you think tonight’s attack is going to be a peaceful affair?” Ramage teased Southwick. “That’s why you haven’t been trying to persuade me to let you go?”

  “No, sir,” Southwick answered promptly. “At my age I don’t fancy traipsing over miles of sand and maquis. It’s my feet that aren’t willing! Find us a French frigate to board, and I’ll be an eager volunteer. But this walking round the countryside …”

  As soon as the American was out of earshot, Southwick commented: “I wonder how many times he’s prepared your sword and pistols? A few dozen, I reckon.”

  With the shadows lengthening across the deck, Ramage watched as Kenton and Martin stood in the two cutters, checking their contents before they were hoisted out. Earlier he had seen Jackson—who as captain’s coxswain was responsible for the gig—going over the various items with Paolo. The boy had taken the task very seriously and Jackson, several inches taller, had bent to listen to him. Jackson had checked the gig, or whatever boat the Captain was going to use, hundreds of times before in previous years and could do it blindfolded, but he had the patience and, Ramage guessed, the affection, to go over it with Paolo as though this was the first time.

  The wind was still light and it was time to be heading back for the coast. No one with a spyglass would be able to see that a frigate was steering the opposite course. Nor would they notice her later heave-to and hoist out boats, to be towed astern …

  William Martin suddenly realized that it was two months to the day since the port admiral at Gibraltar had given him orders to join the Calypso, newly arrived from the West Indies. He was, the admiral said, replacing a fourth lieutenant who had quit in Gibraltar after being appointed to her in Jamaica, because the original second lieutenant had been killed in action (and the Captain wounded), so the other lieutenants had moved up a place—Wagstaffe went from third to second, Kenton moved up to third and a new man had been sent over as fourth.

  The new man must have had fancy ideas. Martin had since gathered that he was a favourite of the commander-in-chief at Jamaica, and after the spaciousness of a 74-gun ship of the line he probably found a frigate small. Martin also suspected that Wagstaffe, now away taking to Gibraltar the French frigate they had captured, and Kenton, had taken a dislike to the new Lieutenant. They were an easygoing pair, Wagstaffe lanky and viewing life outside the ship as a humorous affair, while Kenton, small and red-haired, his face always red and peeling from sunburn, took very little interest in anything happening beyond the ship but had Wagstaffe’s same amused attitude towards naval life. This occasionally shocked Martin, to whom the volume of Regulations and Instructions, and the slim copy of the Articles of War, were like a Bible.

  Anyway, the pair of them had been very good to William Martin, the new Fourth Lieutenant replacing the fellow who quit, and he was lucky they and the Captain (and the First Lieutenant) liked his flute and encouraged him to play it. Certainly the ship’s company enjoyed it, and John Smith the Second, who had been the ship’s fiddler for years, was thankful not to have to fetch out his fiddle when the men wanted to dance to the tune of some forebitters or old favourites from one of Thomas Gay’s operas, which Martin enjoyed playing of an evening.

  Martin took a cutlass from the pile now lying on the deck by the grindstone and tested its edge. It had been well sharpened. Occasionally a careless man holding the blade to the stone would burr over the edge but, judging by the way this one was done, the man might well have been an itinerant knife grinder before being swept up by a press-gang. “Knives to grind, scissors to mend!” Martin could remember the tinkers walking the streets of Rochester and Chatham, their grindstone fitted to a wheel-barrow, their jug of water to whet the stone, and their
cry, many of them with the addition of “Pots to mend! Put a sharp on y’ scissors, ladies!”

  For a moment he felt a nostalgia for the Medway, where he had spent his childhood and where even now his father was master shipwright at the Chatham Dockyard. The saltings, the acres of reeking mud exposed at low tide; the sea kale, the footprints of gulls and waders in the mud, the keen east winds of January which they said blew all the way from Russia … it was a long distance from here to the Medway. Perhaps two thousand miles, and certainly another lifetime. He found it hard to imagine a young William Martin who rowed on the muddy river in the little skiff that he had built himself. In fact his life seemed to have begun just two months ago, when the Port Admiral had said to him: “I’m sending you over to serve under Captain Ramage. By Christmas you’ll be dead or a hero, but if you see the New Year in, you’ll have learned enough from him to stand a good chance of being made a post captain by the time you are thirty.”

  Well, the Port Admiral seemed to be right—Captain Ramage’s first foray into the Mediterranean with the Calypso had resulted in blowing up one French frigate, sinking a second and capturing a third, which was the one that Wagstaffe was now sailing to Gibraltar. All three frigates had, by chance, been sister ships of the Calypso, which in turn Mr Ramage had himself captured in a battle in the West Indies.

  But right now Martin had to admit, as he selected two pistols from a couple of dozen in a skip beside the cutlasses and snapped them to make sure the flints were giving strong sparks, the idea of the forthcoming attack on the semaphore station seemed dull stuff. As dull, he thought, as “blackstrap.” Ever since he first went to sea as a midshipman there had been a romantic ring to the phrase “being blackstrapped,” which was seaman’s slang for being sent to the Mediterranean.