Ramage & The Drum Beat

by Pope, Dudley

  Then there was Stafford, the Cockney locksmith who’d prefer to watch the guillotine blade drop, should he ever be strapped down on ‘The Widow’, instead of being blindfolded. Bridewell Lane wouldn’t see him again. Then the rest of those with him at Cartagena – Fuller of the fishing line; the young Genovesi, Rossi; the cheery coloured seaman Maxton; and Sven Jensen… And the Kathleen herself; she lived, had a will of her own, had peculiar little quirks her captain had to understand and pander to, who responded with all her wooden soul when sailed properly, but became dead in the water the moment anyone ignored for a moment the precise set of her sails or used her helm with a hard hand. Matchwood – he was consigning her to matchwood, shattered flotsam to be cast up piece by piece at the whim of wind and current for month after month and probably year after year along the Portuguese, Spanish and African coasts. Men speaking many languages would seize those pieces of her timbers and carry them home to burn on their fires or patch their homes and never know whence they came.

  He found his eyes fixed on a few square inches of deck planking at his feet: he saw each hard ridge of grain standing proud above the tiny valleys where the softer wood between had been scrubbed away over the years by countless seamen. He saw the grain, the knots, the very texture of the wood with a new clarity, as though for all his life without realizing it he’d been looking through a steamed up glass window which had been suddenly and unexpectedly wiped clear. He saw the wrinkling of his soft black leather boots marked as white lines where salt had dried in the creases. He felt the downdraught of the mainsail and glanced up to realize he’d never before really seen the texture of the sail. Nor, as he looked over the larboard bow, the gentle pyramiding of the sea. Nor the deadliness of a group of five or six enemy sail of the line, one of them the largest ship in the world, the biggest thing the hand of man had ever created to float on the sea, and intended only to kill.

  The sight brought him back to the immediate present and the limited future. The Kathleen was close enough now for the hulls of Cordoba’s leading ships to be outlined above the line of the horizon, and for a moment their size and slow progress took Ramage back to a childhood episode: crouching muddy, nervous and excited in the rushes at the side of a lake, his eyes only a few inches above the water, watching swans returning to their nests nearby with their cygnets: rounded, majestic, splendid in their graceful movements, yet each with hard, wicked and spiteful eyes, ready to savage anything in their path – particularly a small boy lurking in the rushes.

  The San Nicolas was still leading, forming the sharp end of the wedge with the Salvador del Mundo on her larboard quarter and, beyond, the San Josef. On the nearest side of the wedge the Santísima Trinidad was on the San Nicolas‘ starboard quarter, with the San Isidro astern of her. The San Nicolas was the key, and he was thankful, although she was an 84-gun ship, she was next but smallest of the five.

  He felt inside his shirt for Gianna’s signet ring, ripped it from the ribbon on which it hung, and slipped it on to the little finger of his left hand. It fitted perfectly since it was a man’s ring and Gianna normally wore it on her middle finger. Curious, he thought, that a family heirloom of the Volterras, handed down from generation to generation, should leave its Tuscan home to spend the rest of Eternity with him at the bottom of the ocean eleven leagues south-west of Cape St Vincent. She was and would be with him in spirit: thank God not in the flesh.

  Gloomy, morbid thoughts but excusable. He almost laughed at the thought that he was really solemnly apologizing to himself. When Southwick had walked away from Ramage he’d wished he’d shaken him by the hand. He couldn’t because the ship’s company would have seen and guessed it was a farewell. It wouldn’t have made them do their jobs unwillingly, but his years at sea had taught Southwick that men fought like demons when there was a chance of survival, but a condemned man rarely if ever tried to fight his way off the scaffold. A man tended to bow to the inevitable – which, he chuckled to himself, was inevitable.

  The Master, giving his orders through force of habit, had time to reflect that secretly he’d always dreaded the time when he’d be too old to go to sea. He hated houses, hated gardens, hated even more the thought he’d end his days anchored to one particular house and one particular garden, and would only leave it when he was carried off in a plain deal box (he’d specified that in his will; the usual expensive coffin with bronze fittings was a sinful waste of good wood, metal and money).

  After taking up some bearings on the San Nicolas he’d deliberately stayed near the mast. Mr Ramage was leaning back against the taffrail with that look in his eyes that told Southwick he was taking a last look far beyond the horizon into a world of his own. Probably thinking of the Marchesa. Aye, they’d have made a handsome couple, he thought sadly. Now it’d be left to some young fop to lead her to the altar.

  That lad – Southwick found it easy to obey his orders yet think of him as a lad – had been born with all the advantages possible: son of an admiral, heir to an earldom, clever (except in mathematics, which he freely admitted), humorous and with this extraordinary and quite indefinable ability to lead men. With only a few years at sea, barely past his twenty-first birthday (if in fact he’d yet reached it) he’d inherited his father’s enemies in the Service and so far had beaten them.

  So far – and this was as far as the lad would go. Now he was going to sacrifice his life (to the King’s enemies, anyway) in a manoeuvre which would probably fail – through no fault of his – and almost certainly not be appreciated, except by his father and the Commodore. Courage, Southwick thought as he bellowed through his black japanned speaking trumpet at a skylarking sailor, was an inadequate word to describe what’s needed to sentence yourself to death.

  Jackson fingered the two pistols Mr Ramage had given him and wondered whether to continue holding them or just put them down somewhere. They wouldn’t be needed now – and he’d known that long before Mr Ramage had yanked them out of the band of his breeches and started drawing on a pad of paper.

  The American had begun to guess how it would all end when Mr Ramage interrupted old Southwick’s meal, and knew for certain a moment later when the quartermaster was told to edge up to windward. Jackson was surprised how long it took old Southwick to hoist in what Mr Ramage intended to do. Jackson supposed it was because Southwick was old; too set in his ways – which was why he was still Master of a ship as small as the Kathleen – to anticipate someone might do the unexpected. And Jackson realized he’d learned that lesson from Mr Ramage. ‘Surprise, Jackson – that’s how you win battles,’ he’d once said. ‘If you can’t surprise the enemy by stealth, you can always surprise him in front of his very eyes simply by doing something completely unexpected!’

  Well, old ‘Blaze-away’s’ son practised what he preached, though this’d be the last time. Jackson felt no regrets as he looked at Cordoba’s ships with the knowledge they would probably kill him and the rest of the Kathleens within the hour. He’d felt no regrets the day he left Charleston as a boy in a schooner trading to the West Indies; no regrets as the coast of South Carolina had finally dipped astern below the horizon. That was nearly twenty-five years ago, and he could still picture it. No regrets either, when he’d been pressed into the Royal Navy, despite his American citizenship. And he knew that given the chance of going back now and steering a different course so that he wouldn’t risk dying this Valentine’s Day, he wouldn’t change anything.

  Ramage’s feet now ached so much they throbbed and his boots seemed a size too small. The night of fog left him tired, his eyes strained and burning as though the eyelids were dusted with fine sand. At sea the emergencies nearly always came when you were physically at the end of the rope, rarely when you were fresh. He was so tired everything around him had an air of unreality. He felt he was using the Kathleen as a hideous mask to frighten the Spanish. Or – and the thought almost made him giggle – like a frightened little man using stilts to make himself ten feet tall. He thought how in a thick mist the boulder
s on the Cornish moors looked grotesque and huge, yet in sunshine seemed rounded and small. Mist…grotesque and huge… The words seemed to echo as he repeated them. Mist, fog – smoke! Even the sail of the line looked grotesque (and still did) with banks of smoke from the guns drifting over them – particularly the Culloden when the wind blew the smoke of her own guns back on board until the draught down the hatchways made it stream out of the ports again. But the Kathleen’s guns couldn’t make enough smoke.

  Then he remembered himself as a young midshipman, one of a group secretly burning wet gunpowder to smoke out the rats and cockroaches in their berth. (It had resulted in them all being mastheaded because they’d forgotten the smell of the smoke would drift, and a Marine sentry had promptly raised the alarm of fire.) The idea grew in his mind. But how to make a screen of smoke large enough to hide the Kathleen, using only wet powder? Perhaps the braziers used to dry and air below deck? Light them, toss in some chunks of pitch and then wet powder? It might work with the braziers up on the weather side so the wind blew the smoke across the ship. Anyway it’d probably puzzle the Spaniards long enough to make them hold their fire for a few minutes – and that alone made it worth trying.

  And need all the men die? There might be a chance for some of them. Piles of lashed-up hammocks on deck – they’d float and support men. So would all the spare wood the carpenter’s mate had stowed below. The lashings of the spare gaff stowed alongside the mast must be cut so it would float clear. He called Southwick and Edwards, the gunner’s mate, and gave them their instructions.

  Then, as the details of his plan gradually took shape, he realized he wanted a dozen men who were nimble, good with cutlasses, and who’d fight until they were cut or shot down. Who should he choose? Out of the whole ship’s company it was only a question of eliminating the less nimble since everyone met the other requirements. Well, it boiled down to choosing a dozen men to die with him, so first he decided on Jackson and the five who’d been with him at Cartagena.

  He told Jackson to hail the five with the speaking trumpet, and picked another half-dozen from those at the guns. As soon as they were all grouped round him he gave them their orders.

  ‘It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire,’ he concluded as he dismissed them, but he noticed they walked with jaunty strides, obviously delighted at having been chosen. The poor fools, he thought. Yet perhaps they weren’t – he was honest enough to admit he was glad he was going to lead them because he’d no wish to stay in the frying pan.

  ‘Do we stand a chance, sir?’ Jackson asked quietly.

  ‘Of telling our grandchildren about it? No, none. Of doing the job – yes. At least an even chance.’

  Jackson nodded. ‘I’m glad she isn’t, for her own sake, but the Marchesa’d like to be with us, sir, and Count Pitti.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ramage said shortly, instinctively feeling the signet ring with his thumb. He had to say it to someone, if only to – well, he felt an aching guilt towards his Kathleens.

  ‘Jackson, if there was any other way’ – he glanced back at the British line, but except for the Captain steering towards them, it was sailing on, drawing away, although a couple more of the leading ships had tacked – ‘I’d try it but there isn’t…’

  ‘We know, sir, but none of the lads’d change places with anyone walking down St James’s.’

  Ramage looked at his watch. They’d tacked only a few minutes ago. It seemed an hour. His mind was racing and the men were working fast: already the braziers were being hoisted up on deck, and there was a stack of hammocks round the forehatch with others being arranged in piles along the centreline.

  The secret papers: he’d forgotten to get a lead-lined box made. He’d use a canvas bag and a roundshot. Jackson would have to put the signal book in at the last moment and then throw the bag over the side. Down in his cabin once again he glanced round as he put the papers in the bag. Few cabins in a ship of war could have such memories for a captain. He shut the top drawer and opened the second. Gianna’s silk scarf was lying there where he’d put it when he came back on board, neatly folded. He picked it up, intending to tie it round his waist, then decided neither smartness nor the custom of the service was important now and knotted it round his neck, tucking the ends under his stock. If he’d brought her any happiness, then now he was going to bring her an equal amount of grief.

  Then he was back on deck, looking at the San Nicolas. As she and the rest of the leading ships drew nearer he saw they were farther apart than he first thought.

  ‘The right ship’s leading ’em, sir,’ commented Jackson as Ramage drew yet another plan showing the position of the ships, this time to help him calculate the best angle of approach.

  ‘Right ship?’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed, sir? She’s named after the same saint as you!’

  The San Nicolas – no, he hadn’t realized it and said with a grin, ‘Since she’s leading this undignified rush for Cadiz, Jackson, I’ll trouble you not to mention it!’

  Jackson laughed. ‘Well, sir, let’s hope he decides to look after you and not the Dons!’

  The San Nicolas, Ramage reflected: an 84-gun ship of about two thousand tons compared with the Kathleen’s 160 tons. Why, the Spanish ship’s masts and yards alone would weigh as much as the whole of the Kathleen, while the nose on the figure head of St Nicolas must be about thirty feet above the waterline. The jib-boom end would be all of sixty-five feet high – and that was the height of the Kathleen’s mast… Oh, the devil take it, he told himself angrily, guessing dimensions won’t make the San Nicolas an inch smaller or the Kathleen an inch larger.

  ‘Any signals to the Captain from the Victory, Jackson?’

  ‘Can’t see the Victory for smoke, sir; but nothing hoisted in the Captain: no acknowledgements: just her colours.’

  Southwick said, ‘Captain Collingwood won’t leave the Commodore unsupported for long, orders or no orders. We’ll soon see the Excellent following the Captain.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Did you expect the Captain to quit the line, sir?’

  ‘Yes. At least, I hoped she would!’

  ‘But the Commodore left it a bit late,’ ventured Southwick.

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders with feigned indifference. ‘Late for us; but he’s probably just got time to head them off – particularly if we can cause a delay. He won’t have time to get in among the leaders, though.’

  ‘He’ll go for the Santísima Trinidad?’

  Ramage nodded. He knew instinctively that if there was any choice that the Commodore would tackle the largest ship in the world, and by chance she was to leeward of the rest and so nearest to the Captain.

  Then Ramage looked at the Spanish ships, at the Captain, at the British line and at the sketches on his pad, and suddenly he knew his plan was not only futile but absurd. Despite what he’d just said to Southwick he knew that even if the Kathleen did manage to delay the Spanish van for fifteen or twenty minutes, the chances of the Captain catching up were slender. But, more important, even if she did she wouldn’t be able to head off all those ships: each one of them had a heavier broadside: all of them would rake her time and again before her own broadsides would bear.

  And he knew that even now he could wear round the Kathleen on some pretext or other and return to her proper position, astern of the Excellent. But he was still looking at his sketch of the Kathleen superimposed on the San Nicolas when he realized that, despite what the pencil lines told him, he had to go on because if he turned back now, for the rest of his life he’d never be sure whether it was logic or fear that made him give up.

  Once he’d decided to go on he was angry with himself for the alternate bouts of fear and calm, confidence and uncertainty. And then he also realized that although the Commodore might have had similar doubts (though hardly similar fears) he’d nevertheless quit the line and was going to try, and that was all that mattered. If the Kathleen could give him an extra fifteen or twenty minutes, they might make
all the difference between complete failure and a partial success…

  And he must put a term to idle thoughts and daydreams: the San Nicolas was coming up fast, and there was no room for mistakes. Edwards had the braziers ready, lashings holding the four legs of each one against the ship’s roll, and they were half-full of old shavings and scraps of wood and chunks of pitch, a few screws of paper tucked in the bottom ready for lighting.

  Ramage’s dozen men were arming themselves with a variety of weapons. Jackson had a cutlass in his hand and a butcher’s cleaver – presumably borrowed or stolen from the cook’s mate – swinging at his belt from a line through the hole in the wooden handle. Stafford had cut down the haft of a boarding pike so that he had in effect a three-sided dagger blade on a three-foot handle, and he was practising swinging a cutlass with his right hand and lunging the pike with the left. He’d arrived at the old main-gauche, Ramage realized, without ever having seen the shadier side of knightly combat. Maxton, the coloured seaman, had a cutlass in each hand and was slashing at an imaginary enemy with such fast inward swings that Southwick commented to Ramage, ‘He could cut a man into four slices before anyone saw him move.’

  ‘He was born with a machete in his hand,’ Ramage replied, remembering Maxton’s comment at Cartagena. ‘He learned to swing a blade cutting down sugar cane.’

  Still the San Nicolas ploughed on. The nearer she came the less graceful she appeared: the cutwater could not soften the bulging bow, the bow wave was no longer a feather of white but a mass of water being shoved out of the way by the brute force of a ponderous hull. Her sails were no longer shapely curves but overstretched, overpatched and badly-setting. The beautiful lady in the distance was proving on closer inspection to be a raddled woman of the streets.

  But there was no mistaking that raddled or not the San Nicolas had teeth: the muzzles of her guns were dozens of stubby black fingertips poking out of the ports. In a few minutes he’d be able to see details of the gilt work on her bow and figurehead. She was about a mile off.