by Dudley Pope
He had been so sure he had missed the convoy that even now he suspected the sails belonged to a flock of coasters which, after sheltering in the same port from the recent mistral, were now sailing together out of habit; the old routine of “Let us proceed together for mutual protection.”
Aitken was perched comfortably aloft and Ramage had to walk out from under the awning to watch him. Now he was pulling out the tubes of the telescope, checking that they were lined up with the marks giving the right focus for his eye, and then looking out to the south-west. He seemed to be taking an age and it was as much as Ramage could do to avoid calling up to him. Finally the telescope was lowered.
“Deck there, sir.”
“Deck here.”
“Fifteen ships, sir, and all apparently steering for this bay.”
“No escorts?”
“None in sight, sir; just merchantmen jogging along under easy sail. They’ve a soldier’s wind out there; south from the look of it. We might be lying to a local breeze in here.”
“Very well, Mr Aitken, come down when you’re satisfied. Lookout! Report any change of course or increase or reduction of sail.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
By now Southwick, roused from below by the shouting, was standing beside him, a happy grin on his face.
“So our signal did get through, sir!”
“Seems so,” Ramage said, mildly irritated that Southwick had said from the start that it would, an example of the Master’s usual optimism swamping logic. “We’d better change into trousers and shirts and join the ranks of the sans culottes because this is supposed to be a French frigate and we may get a visit from the senior master of the merchantmen.”
“Do you think we could fool him, sir?”
“No, which is why I want to spot him early and, if necessary, pay him a visit.”
“He’ll probably be flying some sort of pendant and throwing his weight about,” Southwick said.
Aitken walked up, rubbing his hands on a piece of cloth, trying to remove tar stains picked up from the rigging and balancing his telescope under his arm.
“Half a dozen of them are fair-sized ships, sir,” he reported. “The rest range from large coasting brigs to tartanes and a small xebec. They’re in no sort of formation, although they’re following what seems the largest ship. She probably wants to get into the bay first to find a good depth. There’ll be a few foul berths and fouled anchors in here before the night’s out!”
Aitken’s words reminded Ramage that he had many decisions to make before the merchantmen arrived, and he went aft to the taffrail and began striding athwartships, still protected from the glare of the setting sun by the awning, and able—for what it was worth—to look at the semaphore tower.
Twenty short paces from the larboard side to the starboard let him form in his mind the question of the semaphore tower. Leave it or cut it down? In favour of leaving it was—well, nothing: the French Army would find out soon enough that its garrison at Foix had vanished, and perhaps Aspet would mention the French frigate that had been at anchor near by. Would the Army put the two together? It was unlikely; there were no signs of a struggle; the French would just find the barracks empty and the tower unmanned. And the cows missing, providing they knew about the cows. The villagers would be no help—they would be hiding (and regularly milking) the cows, and from what that despicable Lieutenant had said, would be delighted that all those robbers had vanished. No doubt the older folk who did not agree with the Revolution would regard it as intervention of Divine Providence and say a few prayers of thanks—until the replacement garrison arrived.
So cutting down the tower would raise the alarm with the French Army authorities; leaving the tower and the rest of the camp intact would puzzle them as well. And, Ramage realized, he knew enough now about semaphore camps to attack a dozen of them once he had disposed of the convoy.
Five turns back and forth across the quarterdeck was a hundred paces, and had been enough to make up his mind about the tower. The cutters could go over at sunset—which would be before the merchantmen were close enough to see what was going on, but the time when sending semaphore signals stopped for the day—and bring back the Marines, leaving them enough time to tidy up the camp and remove any sign of their visit. The idea of the French Army (through the men at Aspet and Le Chesne) slowly discovering that their Foix camp was deserted appealed to him; he knew it would have a ghostly effect on many French soldiers who, though atheism was the official creed, had been born and bred as Catholics, and no matter what Revolutionary talk had subsequently been dinned into them, still retained enough of their childhood training to cross themselves in moments of extreme danger and have a healthy fear when nearly forty men suddenly vanished without trace.
He turned once again—the sun was lower now and peeping under the forward side of the awning—and considered the convoy now approaching under orders (his orders!) to anchor in the Baie de Foix to await an escort.
One 36-gun frigate should be enough of an escort, though a few cautious masters would no doubt complain. The longer the ships stayed at anchor the more chance there was that people from the merchantmen could discover that the Calypso was British: men might row to the camp at Foix, planning a night’s carousing with the garrison, and raise the alarm.
It would take a day or two for Aspet or Le Chesne to react to having no answer to their flags—Ramage realized that Foix had no horse, so it was reasonable to suppose the other two were without horses too, so they would have either to march to Foix or commandeer a horse from a village (more likely a donkey or mule) to find out why the answering flag was not hoisted. He could just imagine a soldier sitting astride a donkey, feet nearly touching the ground, and jolting his way to Foix. The poor fellow would probably prefer to walk; in fact from Ramage’s own experience walking was always preferable to riding bareback on a donkey.
That made eleven more double crossings of the quarterdeck; 220 paces to decide about the merchantmen. He realized he had examined the problem in detail and from every angle, but had made no decision. His feet ached, his eyes ached, his head ached. And the Calypso had swung close enough to the shore to have mosquitoes arriving any moment, each demanding their pint (it seemed) of blood. Very well, the merchantmen would have to come into the Baie and anchor while Orsini was rowed to each of them to hand over the written orders.
So that was decided, and it had taken another forty paces, a total of 260.
What was he to do with the convoy once he had control of it? He could not expect them to sail to Gibraltar and deliver themselves up to the prize marshal, but he could not spare fifteen prize crews and guards for all the prisoners.
Would they sail to the place he really wanted to have them anchored, where he could deal with them at his leisure? For three turns across the quarterdeck he repeated the place’s name, as an infatuated lover might say the name of his mistress. It might work, and he had nothing to lose (except for fifteen merchant ships) if it did not. He went down to his cabin for one more look at the chart before the light went.
CHAPTER NINE
PAOLO climbed back on board the Calypso in the darkness, and while the cutter was being hoisted in under Jackson’s directions he decided that the last hour and a half had been the strangest in his life—so far, anyway. Serving with the man he hoped would one day become his uncle by marriage produced more surprises than did a Three Kings’ party every January when he was a little boy in Volterra.
He petted his coat pocket to make sure his notes were dry—there was always a slop thrown up when a boat went alongside a ship, and the cutter had just done that fifteen times: sixteen counting her return.
“The Captain is waiting for you in his cabin,” Aitken said, his figure shadowy in the lantern light.
“Aye aye, sir.” First lieutenants do not waste time, Paolo grumbled to himself: three hours ago, he and Martin were shifting their gear out of the signalmen’s hut and making sure they had left nothing behind that could reveal
the British had been there. Since then he had boarded fifteen enemy ships …
Paolo could not get used to trousers and a white shirt, open at the throat, even if it did have lace at the cuffs. The Frenchman for whom it had been made—that miserable Lieutenant—was too thin; Paolo was afraid that any exertion expanding his chest would rip it in half.
“Orsini! The Captain!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Mr Aitken was such an impatient man. One could not report to the Captain wearing sodden boots.
A bellow from the Captain coming up the skylights from the cabin proved him wrong, and he scuttled and squelched down the companion-way, ignoring the sentry’s salute in his agitation, and burst into the cabin without knocking.
Ramage looked up from his desk, his face seeming daemonic in the shadows of the flickering lantern.
“Go outside again and knock.”
An embarrassed midshipman went outside, shut the door, said “Evening” to the sentry—the nearest he could get to an apology—and knocked on the door just as the sentry, not to be outdone, announced loudly: “Mr Orsini, sir!”
“Send him in.”
Once again Paolo ducked his head and entered the cabin. Seeing the Captain in an open-necked seaman’s shirt was a shock; the hairiness of his chest was also a surprise. Because the Captain’s stock was usually tied high under his chin, Paolo realized, one did not think of there being a body—not in the hairy sense, anyway—’twixt stock and sole. Ah, there was a fine phrase; he had recently come across “‘twixt” but had spent the last few days in the company of “Blower” Martin and Jackson, both splendid men but unappreciative of such a word.
“Why is that dam’ silly grin on your face?”
“I was—er, well sir …” Paolo fumbled for a reason, unwilling to take a chance with “‘twixt stock and sole,” and finally dragged his notes from his pocket. They were wetter than he had realized. His hands had been wet when he added paragraphs to them and even wetter when, a few minutes ago, he had checked to see if they were dry.
“What on earth have you got there—a wet rag?”
“The list of ships and their cargoes, sir,” Paolo said miserably. “I think I can still read it.”
Ramage took out his pen, ink and sheet of paper. “Start reading, then.”
“I went to the largest ship first, sir, as you told me. She’s the Sarazine of Toulon, 560 tons, pierced for eight guns but carrying only four, all nine-pounders from the look of it. Seven men and the master—he complains of several desertions before sailing.
“He says he has been the commodore of the convoy from Barcelona to here and is very angry about the lack of escort. He complains of the responsibility. I told him I was only an aspirant and knew nothing about it all and my orders were to deliver the orders. He calmed down after a while and accepted the new destination but says he has no charts for that coast.”
Ramage nodded. “You reassured him?”
The question relieved Paolo who, faced with the same complaint by all fifteen shipmasters, had promised each of them that copies would be sent on board long before the coast came in sight. “Yes, sir; I said we’d send one over.”
“And the other ships?”
“The same, sir.”
“Very good,” Ramage said, adding dryly: “You’re going to be busy making all those copies.”
“Er—yes, sir. Well, she has a mixed cargo and is under charter to the Ministry of Marine. She’s carrying fifty tons of powder for the garrison at Leghorn, stowed in half hogsheads, as well as flints for flintlocks. Five thousand for great guns, five thousand musket size, two thousand carbine and three thousand pistol.”
Ramage wondered if there was a good source of flints and enough skilled flint knappers in Spain, then realized they might have come overland, across France and the Pyrenees: it would still be an easier journey to Leghorn than across the Alps.
“The second largest ship is the Golondrina, Spanish obviously. Also under charter to the Ministry of Marine. I thought it best not to understand Spanish, sir, and they had an officer who spoke French. Six guns, pierced for ten, mixed cargo. Everything from lumber—for the shipyard, they said—to bolts of canvas. Oh yes, they must be short of casks in Leghorn: she has twenty tons of iron hoops, and thousands of staves for butts, puncheons, hogsheads and barrels, and head pieces of course. Olive oil, Madeira—they must like it in Leghorn, or else they tranship it—and several tons of currants and raisins.
“The master was complaining to his officers in Spanish, not realizing I could understand, that one frigate was not much of an escort, and with the Golondrina’s bottom so foul, she was going to have the frigate alongside of her most of the time firing guns and screaming at him to set more canvas, but as they were so short of sails the French—he used a very strong word, sir—would have to put up with it.”
Ramage looked up. “How many men apart from officers?”
“Only five that I could see, sir, and the master, mate and someone who would be a master’s mate in the Royal Navy. Very undermanned, except in light weather.”
“The next?”
“A very nice brig, the Bergère, captured from us by the French in mid-Atlantic, brought into Toulon, refitted and commissioned as a transport. Three hundred tons, and carrying great guns for ships, carriages for land artillery, harnesses for horses, and bales of hides which have been cut out and now need stitching to make them into harnesses. Very short of men, she was: the master and the mate are doing watch and watch about, and they have only eight men.”
Ramage had heard, as a dismal descant sung by all captured French officers, that they were always short of men, and this was proof enough: undermanned ships in the West Indies could be explained by the loss through sickness and the distance from France. Yet, here, along the Mediterranean coast, they were sending ships to sea with so few men that any master carrying topsails at night—let alone topgallants—in unsettled weather would be asking for trouble: four men trying to furl or reef a topsail in a sudden Gulf of Lions squall might just as well stay in their hammocks and let the sail blow out; they would be unlikely to beat the wind.
“Any of the rest of those ships worth mentioning?” Ramage asked.
“Five are carrying quantities of powder. Some for Genoa, most for Leghorn, and a certain amount for Civita Vecchia.” He read out the names of the ships and the amounts.
“The quantities look like the normal replacement one would expect,” Ramage commented, half to himself.
“Yes, sir. I wonder what sort of quality it is.”
“Hmm … why not have one ship carrying all the powder?” Ramage mused, and then provided his own answer. “Probably put on board whichever ship happened to be loading as the convoys of carts arrived in Barcelona.”
Ramage looked up at Paolo, who was obviously trying to pluck up enough courage to say something.
“Well, what ship has taken your fancy?”
Paolo’s jaw dropped at the way the Captain seemed to have read his thoughts. “She’s a tartane, sir, the Passe Partout. Laden with olive oil in hogsheads. Master, mate and four men. Pierced for four guns, but at the moment mounts only six swivels, three-pounders, I think.”
“Passe Partout, ‘the master key,’” Ramage mused. “What lock do you hope she’ll open for you?”
“If we took her, sir, she’d make a fine tender for the Calypso: tartanes go to windward so well that she’d double the area we could search. Or … well, sir, I could sail her to Gibraltar as the Calypso’s prize.”
“Paolo,” Ramage said affectionately, the first time he had used the boy’s name on board, “would your navigation stand up to a seven hundred-mile voyage?”
“Yes, sir,” Paolo said stoutly and, before a startled Ramage could contradict, he added: “To Gibraltar, anyway. From wherever we took her—I suppose it’d be near the destination—even though it’s seven hundred miles to Gibraltar, I have only to sail west. If I see land to starboard, I keep it there; if to larboard, I keep it there. Th
at way I’m bound to sight Europa Point and sail into Gibraltar Harbour.”
“Like water poured into a funnel, eh? It has to go down and come out of the spout.”
“Yes, sir,” Paolo said lamely, wishing the Captain had chosen a less mundane comparison.
“I’ll bear it in mind. Why a tartane, as a matter of interest?”
“This one was built in Italy, sir, and her master reckons she’s the most weatherly afloat.”
“Never believe a master or owner’s description of his vessel,” Ramage warned mockingly. “Criticize his wife, his mistress, or his house, but never his ship … Now,” he said, pulling out his watch. “Ah, nearly time for our convoy to get under way. Go and tell Mr Southwick that you have orders from me to check the trim of the poop lanterns and make sure the glasses are clean.”
Ramage knew that either Southwick or Aitken would have done that already—the novelty of carrying three lanterns on the stern, one on each side of the poop and one higher in the centre to make a triangle, would have been enough for them to check that the lamptrimmer had done his job properly. He could not remember when they had last used a poop lantern. He could only hope that the quality of the stone-ground French glass was good enough that it did not crack in the windows so that the flames blew out.
He picked up his hat and went on deck. It was dark but cloudless, the stars reflecting just enough light for him to be able to see that the Calypso was almost surrounded by merchant ships. He noticed that they had let go just enough cable from the anchor to hold and not a fathom more; not one of them would have a single man to spare while weighing anchor. Even the cook in some of them would be heaving down on the windlass or straining at the capstan.
He found an angry Southwick on the quarterdeck, peering anxiously from one side to the other with the night-glass.
“Some of these beggars haven’t anchored, sir,” he exclaimed. “Too damned lazy to weigh an anchor. They’ve been drifting across the bay and then tacking back up again … it’s only a matter of time before one gets caught in stays and hits us.”