The Ramage Touch (24 page)

He glanced up and was startled to find that they would be abreast of Isolotto in a few minutes and La Rocca was just beginning to open up beyond it. He swung the telescope slightly – the muzzles of two or three guns poked through the embrasures, but they did not glisten from blacking recently applied, nor could he see any heads wearing bright shakos beyond them or behind the wall. There were just goats this side of the wall, scrambling nimbly along the rocky face of the cliff – goats which would run away if there was sudden human activity. He walked back to the binnacle and glanced down at the compass, up at the luffs of the sails and then across at the nearest dogvane.

The wind was steady from the north-north-west and the
Calypso
was slipping along easily on a heading of north-east, which would take her a hundred yards or so to the east of the anchored bomb ketches. He found Southwick looking at him, a satisfied grin on his face. The master gave a cheery wink. ‘On course and on time, sir.’

‘Luck or judgment?’ Ramage enquired innocently.

‘Best not enquire too closely, sir,’ Southwick said modestly. ‘But as best as I can make out, the lads have anchored those two bombs perfectly, and because no one is firing at them, I presume no one in the Port of Hercules is at all suspicious.’

Ramage could not resist looking at his watch yet again. Twenty minutes to go. In that time the
Calypso
would stretch across in front of Porto Ercole as though heading for the Feniglia, passing close to the sterns of the bomb ketches, which by then should have springs on their anchor cables so that they could turn to the precise degree necessary to train the mortars. As soon as the leadsman was reporting six fathoms and shallowing as they approached the Feniglia, the
Calypso
would either wear round and make for the harbour entrance, or heave-to, keeping up to windward of Porto Ercole, ready to pounce. It all depended on the guns of Monte Filippo and Santa Catarina, the three frigates, the two bomb ketches, and the chart. There might be a rock or two, even a shoal, to the north-east of the harbour, where no ship would normally sail but where the
Calypso
now had to go to get up to windward, but it was not marked on the chart. Nor would anyone expect it to be marked there, although the fishermen would know all about it. The Secca Santa Catarina was shown, a shoal just off the north-east end of the harbour entrance, and the chart said it had a least depth of twenty-one feet over it. No threat to the
Calypso
, whose maximum draught at present was just sixteen feet.

Suddenly he could see into the harbour entrance and there, like three plump black crows perched on a bough, were the three frigates. They were just as he had expected: each had two anchors out ahead and their sterns appeared to be secured to the quay. The telescope showed clearly that tucked between them, on each side of the middle frigate, was some kind of raft, so that the guns and horses could be run down from the quay on to a raft and then hauled forward to be hoisted by a yard tackle. In fact the northernmost frigate was hoisting a gun carriage at this very moment. The gun had been removed – probably hoisted a few minutes ago – and now the carriage was following.

No signal flags were flying, so obviously the senior officer of the three frigates was waiting to see who commanded the
Calypso
before giving any orders – the
Calypso
’s captain might be the senior of them all. Not only that, Ramage thought maliciously, but they do not have the faintest idea of the name of the frigate anyway because we are not flying her pendant numbers. There were no signal flags hoisted anywhere, and no boats making for the bomb ketches to ask the sort of questions that could give the whole game away…

Southwick tapped his arm and Ramage saw the master pointing at a faintly brownish-green patch in the water over on the larboard bow. ‘That’ll be the shoal, sir, Santa Catarina. Won’t interfere with us…’

By now the leadsman standing in the forechains was beginning to chant the depth as he heaved the lead, hoisting it with the water streaming down his leather apron, reading off the marks and coiling the line again. Four fathoms…five fathoms…six fathoms…five fathoms…Ramage watched the chart with Southwick and noted that the shape of the sea bottom being revealed by the leadsman’s shouts was corresponding to the soundings on the chart. The pines lining the Feniglia were now beginning to stand out as individual trees rather than a dark green band at the back of a strip of golden sand which was almost blinding in the bright sun. Through the gap formed by the next bay, peaks showed up like the leaves of an artichoke.

Five fathoms…six fathoms. Ramage ignored the ‘and a half’ and ‘and a quarter’ or ‘and a quarter less’; he was not interested in anything less than a whole fathom; the
Calypso
was merely getting into a good position, not trying to find her way through a difficult channel. Five fathoms…four fathoms …He glanced back to Porto Ercole, now over on the frigate’s larboard quarter, and at the two bomb ketches, and then he looked at Aitken and nodded. The first-lieutenant put the speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted the first of the orders that would wear round the frigate so that she would be steering back almost along the reciprocal of the course that had brought her some three thousand yards off Porto Ercole.

Paolo was angry because his hand trembled as he held the quadrant. It was a one-handed job with the quadrant already set at a particular angle, and all he had to do was to watch the centre of the three French frigates and warn Kenton when the mainmasthead made the correct angle. Finally he used his left hand as well, not to stop the slight tremor of the right – the left did not help because it too was shaking – but because he did not want to make any mistakes. Both the Captain and Kenton had been emphatic that the angle must be correct within a few seconds of arc; any error would mean that the frigates were nearer or farther away, and that could be disastrous.

He would not have been so cross with himself if his hands were trembling because he was frightened – he was not; it was simply that he was excited. Who would not be excited in this situation? Here were a couple of captured French bomb ketches, once again French according to their colours, just nosing up to an enemy harbour under a flying jib and mizen, making perhaps a knot…Captain Ramage had been very emphatic in saying that it must all look quite normal, as though the two bomb ketches were just anchoring normally off the harbour, and the senior of the two commanding officers would be coming in as soon as his ship was properly anchored, ready to report to the senior of the frigate captains and receive any new orders that might be waiting for him. The ketches must not waste time and fiddle about so that the French had any idea that they were in fact anchoring exactly 2,000 yards from the frigates…

Kenton was watching him, speaking-trumpet in his hand; Jackson, too, standing forward ready to let the anchor run, was watching him. Everyone seemed to be watching him. Guiltily Paolo took a hurried look through the quadrant eyepiece. He saw thankfully, after being frightened for a moment that his inattention had taken the
Fructidor
too far in, that the frigate’s masthead in the mirror was not level with the waterline that he could see through the plain part of the glass. Almost, but not quite.

‘How far, do you reckon?’

Kenton’s voice was harsh. It was hard to guess. He had not heard the
Brutus
’s sails flapping as she luffed up to let go the anchor, and he could just see her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly fixed on the starboard beam not a hundred yards away.

‘About a cable, I reckon, sir.’

Two hundred yards…how the devil was he expected to translate in his head a few seconds of arc measured by the quadrant into yards along the surface of the sea? That was for people like Southwick, who could work out mathematical problems in the same way that a child’s ball goes down a staircase – it starts at the top and bounces down, step by step, until it reaches the bottom and stops. And that,
ecco
, is the answer…Southwick made it all seem very logical when he was explaining it, but the minute he stopped explaining and asked for an explanation, the ball seemed to want to bounce upwards, or miss three steps…

‘A hundred yards to go, sir,’ Paolo said firmly, but realized that in addition to his hands trembling, his knees felt shaky too. He was not frightened, but they should not have given this job to someone who did not understand mathematics. ‘Twenty-five yards, sir!’

Everything happened at once: he saw the
Brutus
turn into the wind, sails flapping; Kenton shouted at the helmsman; seamen let halyards go at the run and the flying jib sheets flogged for a moment before the sail began sliding down the stay. Porto Ercole, the frigates and the big fort up on the hill, Filippo, which seemed to be watching them like a crouching animal, suddenly slid to starboard. He turned quickly for a last check – yes, the turn into the wind meant the ketch was still sailing along the 2,000-yard radius from the frigates, so by the time she lost way and the anchor cable began to run, the distance would still be exactly right.

Accidente
, his hands were trembling even more now, and the muscles in his knees seemed to be turning to water, and yet he had made no mistake; he had done exactly what Kenton had told him; the ship would be anchored exactly right. He put the quadrant down on the binnacle box and caught Kenton’s eye. The third-lieutenant winked, and Paolo saw that he too was holding a quadrant – he had checked at the last moment.

‘Good lad,’ Kenton said. ‘Now get forward. I want that spring clapped on the anchor cable as soon as we’ve veered ten fathoms.’

These French galliots were clumsy things, but one could hardly expect too much; they were little more than heavily built boxes which in peacetime would probably be plying between places like Calais and Havre de Grace with cargoes of potatoes or casks of salt fish; perhaps even carrying stone, from somewhere like Caen, which was needed for building a new breakwater at Boulogne. Stone blocks, so Rossi said, were a cargo which most seamen dreaded. The great weight for a small bulk meant that masters tended to overload and if the ship sprang a leak it was usually impossible to shift the heavy blocks down in the hold to get at the source to make repairs. After a few hours’ threshing to windward with a stone block cargo, Rossi had said, and his experience had been in carrying marble from Carrara, even the toughest sailor began to imagine that with all the violent pitching the blocks were lifting and dropping on to the hull like an enormous mallet, forcing the planking…

‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly as Jackson reported that ten fathoms of cable had been veered, the anchor was holding, and they were all ready to clap on the spring.

Paolo looked round at the spring, a heavy rope which came in over the bow but which had been led aft right along the starboard side outside of all the rigging, secured temporarily with lashings to stop it dropping into the water, and coming in over the starboard quarter.

‘Right,’ he said to Stafford, Rossi and two other seamen, who were waiting at the bow, just beyond the mortar. ‘Secure the spring. A rolling hitch, of course,’ he added airily.

‘Of course, sir,’ Jackson said politely, and Paolo blushed.

It had not been necessary to tell
them
what knot to use, but at least they now knew that
he
knew, and come to think of it that was about the only reason for saying it.

The five men seized the spring, a rope of perhaps a quarter of the diameter of the cable, and quickly secured it to the anchor cable with the rolling hitch, Jackson using a length of line to seize the end to the cable. ‘Always worth doing, sir,’ he explained to Paolo, ‘just in case the rolling hitch takes it into its head to slip.’

He turned aft and called to Kenton: ‘Spring is made up, sir; shall we prepare to veer?’

‘Aye, veer enough to take the strain.’

Paolo turned to give the men the order but Jackson’s glance made him pause. The American was staring along the starboard side, obviously trying to warn him about something – the lashing!

‘Cut the lashings…’ He watched as the men went along the ship’s side, slashing at the lines with their knives, so that heavy rope dropped down into the water with a splash.

‘Right – Jackson, you and Stafford stand by to get the hitch over the side; Rossi and you two, veer away on the cable…’

The seamen knew well enough what to do, but it was part of a midshipman’s job and training to give orders. Jackson and Stafford stood by at the rolling hitch, the knot making a bulky lump in the anchor cable which, in the bomb ketch, went over the bow through a fairlead in the bulwark, not through a hawsehole, so that if they were not careful the knot would jam.

Jackson nodded to Rossi and the Italian seaman let the anchor cable suddenly go slack; as it ran out through the fairlead Jackson and Stafford pushed upwards and then pulled on the spring so that the knot flicked out and disappeared over the bow. Rossi snubbed up the anchor cable to stop any more running out.

Paolo turned aft and called to Kenton: ‘Spring made up and ready for veering, sir!’

Kenton, who had been watching the
Brutus
as well as inspecting Monte Filippo with his telescope, said: ‘Very well, leave a couple of men there to veer the cable and bring the rest of your party aft to handle the spring.’

Kenton had to admit that he had not liked the idea of having Orsini to check the mast angle and distance off when they anchored: his complete inability to understand mathematics was a joke in the
Calypso
, although fortunately he could handle a quadrant well enough, and even Southwick had to admit that he had never found the lad make a mistake in the actual sight.

The youngster had been cool enough; he had stood there watching the centre frigate through his quadrant eyepiece as though admiring the view, and when asked he had given quick and accurate estimates of the remaining distance. Kenton knew the Captain would be pleased to hear about that.