Ramage's Signal Read online

  The second part of his idea, which had fluttered across his mind like a scorched moth when he decided to seize the semaphore tower, now seemed much less absurd. Admittedly it could be wrecked by sharp-eyed and suspicious signalmen at the Le Chesne station, but would men who had already spent a year on this job be sharp-eyed or suspicious? It took Paolo long enough to rouse them this morning.

  Yes, the idea might well work. Paolo’s French was quite good enough. With bad weather coming up, the Calypso was going to have to sail for a while, but who could he leave in command at Foix? Aitken was competent enough, but it was taking an unnecessary risk to leave there the man who would command the Calypso should anything happen to her Captain.

  Kenton? The acting Second Lieutenant was reliable enough, but did he have that—well, the sudden capacity to spot an unexpected opportunity and exploit it? He was brave and loyal but, Ramage finally decided, not the man to deal with something that was just as likely to gallop up the track from the village, as appear on the Aspet or Le Chesne semaphore towers.

  Martin—the Fourth, now acting Third Lieutenant. He had made good use of Paolo in the affair of the bomb ketches. Whomever Ramage chose had to work well with Paolo because, in an emergency, it might well be Paolo’s fluent French and illfitting French uniform that kept up a deception that would pull them through. Well, that settled it; young “Blower” Martin would have the job.

  Aitken was walking back towards him with three seamen, one of whom was coming from the direction of the kitchen holding a pail in each hand. Although Ramage had never noticed it on board, all three had the walk of men used to uneven ground; they walked looking ahead while Aitken, for instance, kept his eyes down, knowing an anthill could twist his ankle.

  “What should they do with the milk, sir?”

  “Share it out among the men—use it for cooking if any of them has the skill. They could make a fine omelette if they found out where the hens are laying.”

  The three men grinned and one went over to the milking post, where there was a halter. “We’ll manage somehow, sir,” he said with a broad grin. “This is like home to me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SOUTHWICK was apologetic when he met Ramage at the entry port. “I had the two cutters hoisted in, sir, because they’d finished taking over provisions and those bundles of French uniforms, and I don’t like the look of this sky.”

  “Neither do I,” Ramage said briskly. “Send Martin down to my cabin. I want ten minutes with him, and then the gig can run him on shore and come straight back. Then hoist it in and prepare to weigh.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Southwick said. And, Ramage thought, that brief conversation told a bystander more about Southwick than a full-length portrait in oils by Lemuel Abbott and two columns of biographical notes in the Naval Chronicle—or even three pages, which they had recently devoted to an utterly undeserving, time-serving but very senior admiral just returned home with a pocket full of prize-money after a couple of years as the commander-in-chief of a very lucrative station abroad. Southwick was a fine seaman, ready to act as he thought fit if his commanding officer was not on board and, for that matter, far from nervous about disagreeing (as discreetly as a shire horse attempting a quadrille) if he thought his captain wrong.

  Martin came into Ramage’s cabin like a guilty schoolboy expecting a birching from his headmaster.

  “What have you been up to?” Ramage asked.

  “Why, nothing, sir,” a flustered Martin answered.

  “Don’t look so guilty, then. Now, yes or no, and be honest: with this mistral coming up, the Calypso has to sail and may be away three or four days. Can you go on shore and take command of the seamen manning the semaphore station and run it?”

  “And Marines, sir?”

  “Rennick will carry out your orders, but he will handle his Marines in the normal way. Otherwise,” Ramage added coldly, not wanting to influence the youth’s judgement, “you’ll be responsible for every man, seaman or Marine.”

  “Can I have Orsini, sir?”

  “Yes, of course, you’ll need his French. And Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, because they’re the only ones who know how to work the semaphore, though I suggest you train a spare crew.”

  “What happens if French troops arrive, sir?”

  “If Orsini can’t tell them a good tale and they are not impressed by your French uniforms, I should think you’ll all be shot as spies.”

  “Yes,” Martin said reflectively. “Well, thank you, sir.”

  “For what?” Ramage asked cautiously.

  “Giving me the command, sir.”

  “Very well. Now listen carefully.”

  For the next five minutes, William Martin, 23 years old, who had been serving as a lieutenant in one of the King’s ships for a matter of weeks, could hardly believe his ears.

  By the time the gig had been hoisted on board and secured, clouds looking like strips of sheep’s wool caught on a thorny bramble were beginning to race across the sky from the northwest and the wind was fluking round the big hill towards the end of the Baie de Foix. First a gust would come round the east side and hit the Calypso’s starboard side, making her heel with its violence; then as she began to right herself another circled the western slope to hit the frigate’s larboard side.

  Ramage nodded to Aitken. “When you have the awning stowed below, you’d better get down the awning ridge ropes.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Aitken said patiently, knowing that the Captain would notice in a few moments that two seamen were already undoing them.

  The wind was beginning to sweep across the bay itself, whipping up lines of white caps as though it was a giant flail. Ramage, knowing it could be blowing half a gale in half an hour, again nodded to the First Lieutenant: “Get under way, please, Mr Aitken.”

  The First Lieutenant reached out for the speaking-trumpet. The men were already alert and waiting for the first in the long sequence of orders that would have the Calypso sailing.

  “Man the capstan!” he shouted.

  The bars were already shipped, sticking out chest-high from slots in the barrel of the capstan like the spokes of a wheel, and within moments two men were standing at each of the nine spokes while another hurriedly secured the outer end of each bar to the next one with a line, a routine known as “passing a swifter” and ensuring that the strain of the eighteen men pushing was equal on all the bars and none could slip out.

  “Bring to … heave taut … unbit … heave round …”

  Aitken’s orders had the capstan turning and the thick anchor cable began to come home, water streaming out as the strain squeezed the strands of the rope, and ready to be “nipped” to the messenger. This endless rope went round the capstan, through a block forward and back to the capstan and brought the cable farther aft, where it was dropped down into the smelly depths of the cable tier and stowed by the day’s delinquents.

  It was a busy time for the ship’s boys: seamen used short lines to take a quick turn at intervals seizing, or nipping, the anchor cable to the moving messenger, and then each boy took a line and ran along keeping a strain so that it did not come undone. When they reached the hatchway to the cable tier they quickly undid the nipper, the line which gave them their nickname, letting the anchor cable down into the tier, and ran forward again to repeat the process, each boy handing his nipper to a waiting seaman to be used again as the capstan rumbled and the cable came in.

  Ramage’s manoeuvre for sailing the Calypso out of the Baie de Foix was simple but, like so many examples of seamanship, the simplicity was the result of having a well-trained crew. The frigate was lying head to wind, pointing by coincidence directly at the land at the centre of the crescent made by the bay.

  He intended, when the anchor was off the bottom, to let the wind blow the Calypso stern first out to sea. Once he had plenty of room the helm would be put over. Going astern—having stern-way in other words—meant that the effect on the rudder was the opposite of going ahead; the blade of the ru
dder had to point in the direction the stern was to go.

  The Calypso, sails still furled on the yards, moving only because of the windage on her hull, masts and spars, would come round in a luff circle until her bow was heading out to sea. Then sails would be let fall in the regular sequence and reefed at once, and the helm put over again. Ramage wanted to stay as close to Foix and Aspet as possible, although if the mistral blew for any length of time and became a full Gulf of Lions gale—which was likely—he might have to worry about raising French curiosity as to why one of their ships should want to stay close to land in that weather.

  John Smith the Second was standing on top of the capstan barrel, turning as the head turned—girasole, Ramage suddenly thought, remembering the big Italian sunflower—scratching away at his fiddle, the wind just carrying back to the quarterdeck the sound of a favourite “forebitter,” a tune which kept the men at the capstan heaving on the bars in unison and had those with spare breath joining in.

  Soon Southwick was signalling the cable was “At long stay,” meaning that its angle was the same as the mainstay, and then “At short stay,” the same as the forestay. That was followed by “Up and down,” so the anchor was now off the bottom and the cable hanging perpendicular. At once the Calypso’s bow began to pay off and the men at the capstan, spurred on by Smith’s fiddle and with the weight lessened because they were no longer hauling the Calypso through the water towards the anchor, soon had the anchor up to the hawse.

  Ramage gave brief helm orders as Southwick dealt with catting and fishing the anchor—getting the hook from a tackle on to the anchor and hauling it up horizontally to deck level, where it could be lashed securely in its chocks, safe against seas which might well, within the next few hours, be breaking green over the fo’c’s’le.

  With Aitken standing beside him, Ramage passed on his orders and the Scotsman now had to bellow loudly through the speaking-trumpet as the wind piped up to make his voice heard forward.

  “Away aloft … trice up … layout …”

  Ramage saw the topmen first go up the ratlines hand over hand as if they were weightless, then, after a pause for the next order, swarm out along the topsail yards as the stunsail booms, lying along the top of the yards, were cocked up out of the men’s way.

  “Man the topsail sheets!” That was an order for the men down on the deck. Then the speaking-trumpet pointed aloft for “Let fall!” and down again for “Sheet home!” as the topmen let go the gaskets and the canvas tumbled down, and the men at the long ropes sweeping down from the lower corners of the sail to the deck heaved swiftly to get the sails under control, the wind quick to belly the cloth.

  “Lower booms!” The topmen dropped the stunsail booms back in position.

  “Down from aloft!”

  With that order the Calypso’s finest seamen swarmed down the ratlines again while others on deck took the strain on the braces to swing the yards round. More men were standing by at the topsail halyards and, at Aitken’s order, hauled the yards up several feet.

  Ramage always found it satisfying when sails on different masts were set as though they were one, but the fore and main-topsails hardly had time to get the creases out of the material because of the press of wind before Ramage, looking astern over the taffrail, saw that the frigate was already well out of the bay, the semaphore tower of Foix sitting on its hill like a playing card stuck into a tiny pile of sand, while the big hill between Foix and Aspet now seemed little more than a hummock. Behind it, stretching it seemed right over Languedoc, were fast-moving grey clouds, racing towards them like lancers across a plain. The temperature was dropping now the sun had vanished, and the Calypso began pitching as she came clear of the headlands.

  “Comes up as fast as it does in the Tropics, sir,” Aitken commented.

  Ramage nodded but warned: “In the Mediterranean it lasts longer. Off Martinique we’d forget a squall like this in an hour. Here it can last three days.”

  He waited five minutes and then said: “Close reef the top-sails, Mr Aitken, and make sure there are plenty of chafing mats in position. Have Kenton make sure that all the guns are properly secured.”

  For as long as the mistral lasted, the Calypso’s greatest enemy would probably be not wind and sea as such but chafe, caused by the continual movement of everything in the ship. Sails furled on yards were long sausages with lines, or gaskets, round them at intervals, and the bulges—the bunts—were easily chafed if they touched rigging, so chafing mats had to be positioned to protect them. Everything that could move unnecessarily had extra lashings put on it; the hawseholes on each side of the bow, through which the anchor cables ran, were sealed by bucklers, large wooden shields blocking the holes like tight blinkers over a horse’s eyes.

  “I’m going below for an hour or so,” Ramage said to Aitken. “Call me if there’s any wind shift.”

  Before he went down the companion-way he looked aft again. Across the expanse of sea that an hour ago had been blue but was now a dirty grey and closely speckled with tumbling white caps, he looked at the headland of Foix. There were Martin and Orsini, and Rennick. And all but half a dozen of the Calypso’s Marines. And Jackson and his crew. They would now be watching the frigate leaving. For a moment he wondered if his luck would turn against him and he would never see them again.

  After the wind slowly increased to gale force by evening, Ramage knew for certain as darkness fell that they were in for a storm. For several hours the Calypso’s men had been preparing for it: relieving tackles were put on the great tiller to ease the strain on the wheel ropes and the spare tiller was ready to be fitted in case the regular one broke under the strain; four hefty men were needed at the wheel, each with a rope round his waist secured to a deadeye on the deck to prevent him being washed overboard.

  All the small sails had long ago been lowered from the tops and stowed below; the royal and topgallant yards had been sent down and securely lashed on deck, followed by the royal and topgallant masts, reducing both weight and windage aloft. Preventer braces were rove on the topsail yards; extra gripes had been passed over and round the boats, Southwick himself checking that their plugs had been removed so that flying spray and driving rain did not collect in them like water cisterns.

  Once an hour the carpenter went below with his sounding rod to sound the well: to check, in fact, how much water was getting into the Calypso as her hull worked in the big seas. He had been told to report to Ramage the moment he found the ship was making a fifth more water than usual, and he had yet to make any report.

  Ramage was thankful that Jackson had taken his long, tarpaulin coat and sou’wester hat and tarred them afresh as soon as they came through the Gut into the Mediterranean: the name of the sea always sounded so beautiful and inviting in Homer but it was far more treacherous than the Caribbean and North Sea put together. Storms could and often did spring up in an hour or so and last for days; the seas were short, high and more vicious than anywhere else—except perhaps off the north-west Dutch coast, the Texel, in the late autumn.

  By the early afternoon of the second full day of the storm, the Calypso had been unable to do anything except wear every few hours so that she kept as close in with the coast as possible but not so close that a sudden wind shift would put her on a lee shore.

  Ramage, bored with sitting in his cot—the only reasonably comfortable place in a cabin that otherwise seemed to have a lot in common with a runaway carriage careering down a rough track into a stone quarry—stood up and holding on to rails made his way outside to where the seaman sentry, under orders not to try and stand up, was squatting with his sword beside him, a curious-looking replacement for the usual Marine.

  Ramage took the tarpaulin coat off its hook and struggled into it, helped by the sentry, both men grinning as sudden pitches and rolls sent them reeling helplessly, often holding on to each other instinctively for support. Finally, enveloped in the tarpaulin coat and with the sou’wester pulled down to shelter his eyes,

  Ram
age struggled up the companion-way, at times having to stop and hold on as the frigate rolled so that he was hanging away from the steps.

  He slid back the hatch and stepped out on deck. Kenton was officer of the deck but Southwick, a shiny black tent in his tarpaulin coat and trousers, was standing with him. Both men looked tired, and from their deliberately limited movements Ramage guessed their tarpaulins had leaked so that their clothing beneath was sodden, cold and probably chafing, with the reek of wet wool, which Ramage hated, overpowering the smell of tar from the tarpaulins.

  “Sky’s a bit lighter, sir,” Southwick said cheerily, “and the wind has definitely eased.”

  “The glass?”

  “Steady now, sir. Last drop was a couple of hours ago. I doubt it’ll go down any more.”

  “What’s the course and distance back to the bay?”

  “About nor’-nor’-east, fifteen miles, sir,” Southwick replied. “Two tacks and four hours.”

  Ramage nodded, a movement completely obscured by the sou’wester, “We’ll be able to shake out a reef in a couple of hours: we could just get in by daylight.”

  “Once we get in the lee of the coast the sea won’t be so wild,” Kenton commented, to be reproved by Southwick: “That’d be true anywhere but the Mediterranean. But as soon as it shallows up …”

  “You’re sure about the course?” Ramage asked Southwick who, as Master, was responsible for the navigation of the Calypso.

  “Not to within a quarter point,” Southwick said, “but by the time we’ve worn round I’ll have checked it.”

  Ramage turned to Kenton. “See how she’ll take nor’-nor’-east. Don’t rouse out everyone: just use the watch on deck. And try and get the sails trimmed while the rain has stopped: there’s no need to soak the men again.”

  Half an hour later, with a reef shaken out of both fore and maintopsails and staysails cautiously set, the Calypso was plunging up to the Baie de Foix, the wind slowly backing so that sheets could be eased and now, not hard on the wind, the frigate was slipping easily across the wave tops instead of pounding or, as Southwick grumbled, “digging the same hole twice like a forgetful sexton.”