The Ramage Touch Read online

  He had been very careful in his instructions to the two lieutenants to ensure that they fired alternately, so that he could observe the fall of the shells. It was, as Southwick said, the kind of information that might come in useful one day – if you did everything wrong and Their Lordships put you in command of a bomb ketch…Officers did not have to accept such a command, but if the alternative, as it certainly would be, was to spend the rest of your life on the beach picking up seashells and looking longingly at the distant horizon…

  Doing something wrong, being afraid to take a risk because of the doubtful wording of orders, being scared of doing something because you did not have written orders and thus allowing the enemy to escape: all these were the best argument for a captain having a private income. He need not be a rich man; just rich enough to avoid having to worry about the fate of a wife and children, if he had them. Then he could do what was best for the Service without worrying too much about the idiosyncrasy of an admiral. A nice payment of prize money was often just enough.

  This was not to say that a rich captain could or should ignore or disobey proper orders or take needless risks. Occasionally a situation arose which was not properly covered by written orders, however, and where the captain should use his own initiative, confident that his senior officer and the Admiralty would back him. In fact he could not always rely on such backing; in fact, too, he might do the wrong thing. Ramage remembered his father’s advice – better to be blamed for doing something than for doing nothing. All too often doing nothing was a form of cowardice; the form that paralyses your brain in the wish to avoid being blamed. The clerk’s creed, in other words: you could not be wrong if you never made a decision.

  What the devil all that had to do with firing a couple of dozen shells from a pair of captured bomb ketches he did not know; nor, for that matter, did he know why the Navy always called them bomb ketches, abbreviated, oddly enough, as ‘Bb’, since what their mortars fired were called shells not bombs. When did a shell become a bomb? Grenadiers threw grenades – which were sometimes called bombs, but perhaps only loosely by people who did not know. Anyway, the Admiralty named most of their bomb ketches after volcanoes, several of which began with ‘V’, so in the Navy List there were, for example, ‘Vesuvius (Bb)…Volcano (Bb)…Vulcan (Bb)’ although he could remember Tartarus, Terror and Thunder.

  Southwick nudged him. ‘Wagstaffe will be first,’ he said. ‘A couple of his men are already wrapping the slow matches round their linstocks.’

  Ramage had a mental picture of young Paolo talking to Peter Kenton. He would have found out that there was no race against the watch; that it was the bomb ketch that blew up her cask with the fewest shells that won. Paolo was shrewd enough to know that the most vital shell of all would be the first one fired…

  Over on the foredeck of the Fructidor the conversation had already taken place, just as Ramage had imagined it. While the half a dozen seamen and two powder boys were collecting equipment from the ketch’s magazine, Paolo had managed to persuade Kenton to walk aft with him. Twenty-three-year-old third-lieutenants, only two men removed from the Captain, treated midshipmen with disdain where service matters were concerned, and it was obvious to Kenton that Orsini had some idea he wanted to put forward. Orsini was a brave enough lad in action but had a little too much imagination at times…

  ‘The first shot, sir,’ Orsini said, taking great care that the ‘sir’ was clear and pitched at just the right level.

  ‘What about it – are you afraid it’ll push the mortar through the bottom of the ship?’

  ‘No, sir. I was thinking about the second one, actually. Aiming it, I mean.’

  ‘There’s nothing difficult about that. We see where the first one lands, and that’ll show us what correction we have to make for the second. It’ll fall short, over, left or right…as simple as that. We then increase or decrease the charge, and train left or right.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I was thinking that Mr Wagstaffe might…’ He broke off, hoping Kenton would guess.

  ‘Might what?’ Kenton demanded. ‘He’s a very experienced officer.’

  ‘But I don’t think he has ever fired a mortar, sir. Which means – with respect – that he’s likely to make mistakes in aiming. We might make the same mistakes, too.’

  ‘What sort of mistakes?’ Kenton asked sharply.

  ‘Well, it might be a common error with the first shot for the shell to fall short…Or pitch well over.’

  ‘It might,’ Kenton agreed. ‘But I don’t see what we can do about it.’

  ‘We could let Mr Wagstaffe fire first and see where his shell lands…’ Orsini murmured casually. ‘And make appropriate corrections before we fire.’

  Kenton stopped suddenly and stared at Orsini. ‘Supposing we haven’t made the same mistakes in aiming that Wagstaffe makes? What then?’

  ‘Well, then, we’ll be introducing errors,’ Orsini said cheerfully. ‘It’s a gamble. Not much of one, though,’ he added hurriedly. ‘We’re just gambling that we’d be likely to make the same sort of mistakes as Mr Wagstaffe and Mr Martin. None of us are used to elevating a mortar and using a plunge nob–’

  ‘A plumb bob,’ Kenton corrected. ‘Sometimes called a plummet.’

  ‘…yes, a plunge nob, so we have nothing to lose in seeing how Mr Wagstaffe’s first shot falls? Sir,’ he added uncertainly, because Kenton had taken off his hat and seemed curious about something that might be inside it.

  Finally Kenton jammed the hat back on his head, pointed at the flags being hoisted in the Calypso, and said: ‘All right, m’lad, we’ll gamble. We’ll look daft if Wagstaffe’s had the same idea and waits for us to fire!’

  ‘He won’t,’ Orsini said earnestly, only just stopping himself from adding that it took an Italian to think of such good plans. ‘The men are waiting,’ he added, gesturing to the mortar.

  As soon as he reached the gun, Kenton showed he had not wasted the half an hour spent reading the gunner’s notebook. ‘Right, line up, you men. Jackson, you are number one. You should have the plumb bob. Who has it? Right, give it to Jackson. Now, Jackson, you command, point and serve the vent – under my direction, of course. Stafford, you’ll be number two, so you’re responsible for the cartridge cases and measures. And don’t forget – you might be measuring in single ounces so don’t be heavy handed. You–’ he pointed at the two boys ‘–bring up the powder from the magazine.

  ‘Rossi, you’ll be number three. You collect the fuses, load, help lift in the shell, run out the mortar and train.’ He looked at the remaining three men. ‘Gutteridge, you’re number four. You provide a funnel for the powder, sponge, wipe the bottom of the shell to make sure there’s no loose powder on it, take the fuse from the box and put it in the shell – don’t forget one and a half inches must protrude. Then you help number three run out. Number five – that’ll be you, Barnes. You bring up the shell with number six, and the two of you lift it up while number three guides it into the bore of the gun. Lower it gently. Then you help run out, and then help number three to train. Then you take a linstock and – when you get the order – light the fuse. Number six – that’s you, King. You help bring up the shell, run out and train. Then you prime the vent. If necessary you’ll have helped number three guide the shell into the bore.’

  He made each man repeat his tasks and then said briskly, ‘There are only nine commands you are likely to hear from me and they’re fairly obvious: Run the mortar up – Cross lift to the right (or to the left) – Muzzle to the right (or the left) – Down (the bed bolster will be in place by then) – Load – Prime – Fire!’

  He made the men repeat the sequence and then said suspiciously: ‘You all seem to know your jobs and the sequence of commands very well – why is that?’

  Jackson looked at Orsini, who winked, so the American said: ‘Mr Orsini borrowed a notebook about this gun, sir, so we all sat around this morning and went over it. We were all curious, sir.’

  ‘You didn’t know the Capta
in was going to offer a guinea prize for target practice?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘No, sir,’ he said ruefully, ‘otherwise we might have paid more attention.’

  Kenton grinned sympathetically. ‘Very well, let’s get started. The magazine is open, fearnought blankets unrolled? Right, I see the water tub is there and the match tub. Slow matches alight and–’ he looked carefully ‘–burning steadily. Very well, wet the decks, and then we can load.’

  The deckwash pump started wheezing and spitting fitfully as King began working the handle, and as soon as water came out of the nozzle two other seamen filled buckets and sluiced the deck. The sun had heated the planking and it took several buckets before the wood stayed wetted.

  Finally Kenton gave the signal and four of the men and the two powder boys ran below.

  Listening for the sound of the Brutus’s mortar firing, Kenton took out his watch and began timing. Finally Stafford arrived with his two wooden cartridge cases, cylindrical wooden boxes with lids that slid up and down on loops of line which also acted as carrying handles. He slid up one lid and began undoing the worsted bag, ready to measure out powder, while one powder boy held the second box, and the other waited to run for a third.

  Barnes and King were now walking quickly towards the mortar with a wooden beam across their shoulders. Two thin ropes with hooks hung from the beam, the hooks going through the two carrying handles on the top of the black ball that was the shell. Until Kenton shouted at them to break step, they walked in time, cursing as the shell swung back and forth like a pendulum, catching them across the shins.

  Jackson was walking round the mortar looking at the items the men had placed ready, and he named them out loud, as if checking a mental list. ‘Plumb bob…two cartridge cases and measures…sponge…funnel for the powder…two linstocks… four handspikes…one priming wire…There’s Rossi with the fuses, and I’ve got a knife and the tube box…Here comes the carrying beam and the shell. That’s the lot…’

  Kenton looked at his watch. Two minutes so far – appalling time, but this was the first occasion. Then he noticed that Jackson had been naming the pieces of equipment out loud so that Orsini could check them against a list he was holding in his hand.

  After that the six men went to work as though they had spent the last few weeks doing nothing but fire mortars: Gutteridge held the funnel in the fuse hole of the shell while Stafford measured out four pounds. Rossi handed the cone-shaped wooden fuse to Kenton, who said: ‘We’ll wait a few moments before cutting it. For a nineteen-seconds flight it would be four inches and eighteen hundredths.’

  He turned to Orsini. ‘Stand by here. I’m going to the bow to watch where the Brutus’s–’

  At that moment there was an explosion beyond the Calypso and Kenton ran to the bow, looking up at a small black ball still climbing into the sky at a steep angle. Then, as though rolling over the summit of a hill, it began dropping and Kenton lost sight of it but looked down at the cask. There was a flurry of sand well beyond.

  ‘A hundred yards over!’ he exclaimed and suddenly realized that Orsini was beside him counting out the seconds.

  ‘…twenty-three and four and five…’

  ‘It’s misfired,’ Kenton muttered. ‘It won’t go off. The fuse is damaged.’

  ‘…twenty-seven and eight…’

  The explosion sent up a flock of birds which had been hidden in the pine trees, and along the beach the sandpipers which had stood fast for the mortar firing finally fled for the shell, skimming over the sand like tiny arrows to land again ahead of the Fructidor.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Kenton said, his voice sounding as judicial as possible. ‘A good hundred yards over with the elevation, and more than six seconds too much fuse in the shell.’

  ‘So much for Pythagoras,’ Paolo said sourly, as though his suspicions of the untrustworthiness of both Greeks and mathematics were confirmed. ‘Like us, the Brutus is two hundred yards from the shore; the cask is fifteen hundred yards along the beach. The range is the hypotenuse, which is 1,513 yards.’

  Kenton took out the notes which he had stuffed in his pocket and smoothed flat the pages.

  ‘Damnation, that range is within a dozen yards of the figure in the tables, with a two-pound-six-ounce charge. Wagstaffe must have gone for a much higher range – more than two thousand yards. Yet he wasn’t five hundred yards over…I don’t understand it. Anyway, we’ll keep to our own figures.’ He turned to walk aft to the mortar, calling to Stafford: ‘Put in two pounds six ounces of powder as the charge.’

  He turned to Orsini. ‘I can’t make out the twenty-eight seconds, though: the time of flight for the range Wagstaffe used should have been about nineteen seconds…The devil take it, I think he was unlucky and that fuse burned unevenly because of bad French powder. Cut ours to three and three-quarter inches – let’s stop this “hundredths” business.’

  Jackson handed the fuse and knife to Orsini and held out a foot rule so that the boy could measure the cone. ‘Keep the point upwards as you cut it, sir,’ Jackson warned, ‘just in case there’s any loose powder.’

  Kenton looked across at the Calypso and saw the Captain and the master both watching with telescopes. So were the first-lieutenant and, he realized, most of the ship’s company, too.

  Stafford finished measuring the powder charge into the mortar and Rossi put in a wad and rammed it down vigorously. Kenton told Jackson and Orsini to fit the fuse into the shell, which they did after opening the top, and then gestured to Barnes and King to lift with the beam to place the shell in the mortar.

  A few moments later with the shell settled in the barrel, they were unhooking the lines and getting clear. The mortar was then trained round to the bearing that Kenton had already given to Jackson. The muzzle was lifted with handspikes and the bed bolster was slid underneath so that the mortar was inclined at the precise angle which a harried Kenton had worked out earlier, with a slight correction to allow for the Brutus’s overshooting.

  Jackson reported to Kenton that the mortar was loaded and primed. Barnes, whose job it was to light the fuse of the shell, and Jackson, who would fire the mortar when Kenton gave the order, hurriedly wound slow match round linstocks, thin snakes round sticks each with a single red eye, where it burned.

  Kenton nodded to Jackson, who signalled to Barnes. The seaman reached carefully into the bore with his linstock and warily held the glowing end of the slow match against the fuse. The moment it began to fizz, he jumped back and Jackson touched the vent with his slow match. The mortar gave a gigantic cough and suddenly the men were standing in a cloud of smoke. Kenton and Orsini, both coughing, ran to the bow, looking up into the sky. Above them the shell curved up in the first part of its parabola, wobbling slightly.

  On board the Calypso, Ramage watched the shell as Southwick said to Aitken: ‘It’ll land among the pine trees and start a big fire, you see.’

  ‘Aye, if Wagstaffe was a hundred yards over, those two mathematical wizards in the Fructidor will be five hundred. The fuse must have been defective.’

  ‘There are times when it’s better to be lucky than good,’ Ramage reminded them.

  The three men watched the cask but suddenly it was obscured by a cloud of brownish, oily smoke.

  ‘By Jove, and that’s one of them,’ Southwick said in an awed voice. ‘Thirty yards short but the fuse burst it only four or five feet above the ground.’

  Almost simultaneously there was a throaty explosion behind them as the Brutus fired again. They watched the shell, which exploded four seconds after it landed a good fifty yards beyond the cask.

  ‘Both of them are training accurately,’ Aitken commented. ‘It’s just the range that’s bothering them. They’ve got to watch the amount of powder they use for the charge.’

  ‘That French powder varies a lot,’ Ramage said. ‘The Board of Ordnance says that any captured should be used only in an emergency, and must never be mixed with ours.’

  ‘But the powder in this ship is French,
’ Aitken protested, ‘and it’s never given us any trouble, sir.’

  Ramage shook his head and Southwick laughed. ‘It’s British powder,’ Ramage said. ‘The French must have taken it from a prize they captured. They do, when they can. Southwick and the gunner checked it all as soon as we captured the ship and knew the admiral was going to buy her in.’

  ‘The powder is that different?’

  ‘Yes – the French is coarser for a start. But we tested it with paper.’

  ‘Paper?’ Aitken asked, obviously surprised.

  ‘Yes – you put a clean piece of writing paper down on the deck, make a small pile of powder (a drachm or so) in the middle, and then fire it. The best way is to use a length of wire heated until it’s red hot: slow match can leave some residue because the explosion usually blows the tip off.’

  ‘But what does that tell you about the powder, sir?’

  ‘Good powder gives a good flame and makes a crisp bang. More important, there is no residue, and no burn marks on the paper. If you find white specks left on the paper, or burn marks, you know it’s inferior.’

  He swung round as he spoke because the Fructidor’s shell was already in the air and he watched it land twenty yards beyond the little crater made by the first round. It sat there a moment, a grotesque black egg, and then vanished in smoke. Ramage waited for the smoke to clear and then inspected the cask with his telescope. It still stood four-square, but one of the staves had been pushed in just enough to make a shadow.

  ‘Twice can still be luck,’ Southwick said, his voice full of disbelief, as though he knew his eyes were playing him tricks but dare not admit it.

  Ramage watched Kenton’s crew reloading the mortar and was pleased at the smoothness with which they worked. He had already seen Wagstaffe’s team at work and, as he had commented earlier to Aitken, they looked as though they had spent the last few weeks serving in a bomb ketch.

  Suddenly he saw all the men serving the Fructidor’s mortar standing to attention behind the gun, with Kenton and Orsini standing in front. He pointed them out to Aitken and Southwick. ‘They load faster, and they want to make sure we notice it!’