by Dudley Pope
Ramage felt it verged on melodrama to be so gloomy when the sun was bright and the sea such a sparkling blue, the wind steady and the sky clear. Yet the very clearness of the sky could indicate a change, since the clouds should have started forming by now.
As if reading his thoughts, Southwick said, “Swell’s more noticeable now we’re out of the lee of the island.”
Ramage nodded. “I’ve noted it in the log. About three feet high.”
“Probably nothing to worry about. Not for a few days, anyway.”
Ramage was fascinated by the swell waves. The short seas knocked up by the wind were streaming in from the eastward, and would disappear as the breeze died in the evening. The swell waves were much lower and less frequent and were coming in from the south-east so that their crests moved diagonally under the others, making a herringbone pattern.
Ramage could not resist the temptation to ask Southwick: “There’s no rigging that should be changed, is there?”
“No, sir; everything at all doubtful was replaced the minute I clapped eyes on the first of the swell in Carlisle Bay. While you were on board the Topaz,” he added, and Ramage knew the old man intended only to indicate the precise time, not make an oblique criticism of his Captain’s absence from the ship.
The sun was behind a small cloud but still above the western horizon, deep red, its rays already a peacock’s tail of alternate stripes of orange, yellow and blue. In an hour it would be dark and the wind was becoming fitful as the clouds began dissolving.
Already the convoy was beginning to straggle. The seven leading ships were in position, and so were the next one or two in each column; but after that no telescope was needed to see men out on the yards of many ships, reefing topsails and furling topgallants.
“Look at the mules!” Southwick fumed. “They’d be slow enough if they were setting stun’sails; but they’re actually furling their t’gallants …”
Ramage shrugged his shoulders, and imagined daybreak next morning when he would stand at the main shrouds and stare at the convoy with a telescope, counting the number of ships as soon as it was light enough to discern them, and then search the horizon astern for the missing ones.
Suddenly Jackson called: “Captain, sir, the flagship’s signalling: our pendant, To pass within hail.”
“Very well, acknowledge.”
The response was mechanical, Ramage realized, but his reaction was not, and he glanced across at Southwick and told him to carry on. As the Master began bellowing the orders which sent the men running to the braces to haul round the yards and to the sheets to trim the sails as the Triton’s wheel was put over, and the brig turned on to a course which would take her diagonally across the corner of the convoy, Ramage tried to guess the orders waiting for him on board the Lion.
Routine, or something to catch him out? Since they’d be shouted to him as the Triton came close alongside, there’d probably be only a few seconds for him to react: a few seconds in which to haul in what had been shouted and give the requisite orders to Southwick. But, Ramage told himself, there’s one sure way of making a mess of it, and that’s to start fretting …
It was curious that the Admiral had left him alone since the convoy sailed. Perhaps he was going to send him beating all the way back to Barbados on some footling errand, with orders to rejoin the convoy by noon tomorrow. A small and unimportant task to make sure Ramage had no sleep.
Glancing at the flagship way over on the larboard bow as he went down to his cabin to rinse his face—the scorching, bright sun of the afternoon had left him sticky and slightly dazed—he knew he must beware of getting obsessed with the idea that Goddard was persecuting him. He was, but it didn’t do any good to think about it; on the contrary …
He clattered down the companion-way, acknowledged the Marine sentry’s salute and went into his cabin, ducking his head under the low beams. It was dark down here, and everywhere he saw red orbs—the result of staring at the sun as he paused for a moment before coming below. He squeezed his eyes shut a few times and the orbs vanished. He took the deep metal jug from the rack, pulled out the wooden bung and poured water into the equally battered metal handbasin. One thing about the Caribbean, the torrential rain so frequent in late-afternoon thunderstorms, often without a lot of wind, meant that they could catch rainwater and not worry about spray making it brackish.
As Southwick brought the Triton round to larboard Ramage felt her motion change; the combined roll and pitch on her original course, with the wind on the quarter, changed to sluggish pitching as she ran almost dead before the wind to pass across the corner of the convoy. He reached for a towel, wiped his face briskly, crammed on his hat again and ducked out of the cabin.
He paused at the top of the companion-way and looked astern: the swell waves were longer than he’d thought as they ran up under the wind waves. He counted to himself and saw that the interval between the crests was still the same. It must be an optical illusion; just a trick of the light that made them look longer and larger. Probably because the sun dropping had lengthened the shadows. And he was getting jumpy, too …
In a few minutes the Triton would be passing across the Topaz’s bow. Would Maxine be on deck? He walked aft to join Southwick, and took his telescope from the rack by the binnacle box.
The Topaz was a smart ship and Yorke a lucky man to own five more like her. Lucky and obviously shrewd, and one of the few men he knew that deserved the legacy he’d received from his grandfather. A group of people … he put the telescope to his eye. Yes—there was Maxine, looking through a telescope held by Yorke. Her mother and father were laughing and St Cast was struggling with another telescope. Ramage waved and she waved back—and from Yorke’s gesture and her wriggling he guessed she had accidentally moved the telescope and they could not train it back on the Triton’s quarterdeck.
The brig was moving fast now as she headed for a point just ahead of the Lion: a point chosen by Southwick as being the place where the two ships, travelling on different courses and at different speeds, would converge after covering the minimum distance. In a few minutes Ramage could distinguish the Lion’s rigging as made up of individual ropes, so she was a mile away. He took the convoy plan from his pocket, unfolded the page and glanced through the names to refresh his memory. Looking up again, he could recognize men on the Lion’s decks—a third of a mile to go. Now he could pick out the gilding on her name carved across her transom. And the inside of the transom, behind the stern-lights which now reflected the evening light like dulled mirrors, the cabin in which the convoy conference had been held, and where Goddard and Croucher had clumsily revealed that they were watching—and waiting.
The Lion was pitching too, in response to this low swell; pitching more than Ramage expected. It was emphasized by her slow speed—she was already down to double-reefed topsails so that she did not outsail the convoy.
Ramage knew—for he was clasping and unclasping his hands like a nervous curate—that it was as much as he could do to leave the conn with Southwick. The old Master was more than competent to take the Triton close alongside the flagship; it was simply jumpiness on Ramage’s part; as though everything would go wrong if he was not doing something active. Then he remembered a comment of his father’s—true leadership is being able to sit at the back, watch everything, give the minimum of orders and yet remain in complete control.
“To windward, sir?”
Officially, Southwick was asking his Captain a question. In fact he was making a statement. And as he spoke, Southwick knew the answer was equally predictable.
“Yes, to windward, Mr Southwick; we don’t want to have her blanketing us.”
She was big: Ramage could see that the Triton’s deck was just about level with the Lion’s lowest row of gun ports. And as she pitched she showed the overlapping plates of copper sheathing below the waterline, sheathing foul with barnacles and weed. She had obviously been drydocked before leaving England, and Ramage knew that the two days spent at anchor in
Barbados—plus a few days in Cork while collecting the rest of the convoy—were the only times the ship had been at rest since then. It was a miracle how the weed and goose barnacles managed to get a grasp and flourish. He was so absorbed in the eternal problem of keeping a ship’s bottom clean that he only half heard Southwick’s shouted orders to bear up and bring the Triton round a point to starboard to run close alongside the flagship.
“Man the weather braces … Another pull on the sheets there! … Tally that aft, men, and step lively!”
A brief order to the quartermaster and an injunction to “Watch your luff, now!” then Southwick’s stream of orders stopped as quickly as they started, and the Triton was thirty yards to windward of the Lion and a ship’s length astern of her. She would pass clear of the great yards which towered over the Lion and extended out several feet beyond her sides, and yet close enough for Goddard to shout without effort.
Speaking-trumpet! Ramage turned to call to Jackson and found the American standing just behind him, the speaking-trumpet ready in his outstretched hand. Ramage took it, stepped over to the larboard side and jumped up onto the breech of the aftermost twelve-pounder carronade. He turned the trumpet in his hand: he would first be putting the mouthpiece to his ear so that it served as an ear trumpet.
The Triton was overhauling the flagship fast and as he glanced forward, checking on the trim of the sails, Ramage saw that every man on deck was standing precisely at his post. Those that could had edged over slightly to larboard, as if to hear what was shouted from the flagship and be ready to anticipate any manoeuvres and orders. The sails overhead were trimmed perfectly and drawing.
As Southwick bellowed out an order to clew up the maintopsail, reducing the Triton’s speed to that of the Lion’s—and so judging it that by the time it was done and the brig began slowing down, she would be abreast of the flagship—Ramage could hear an occasional deep thump high above him as the Lion’s sails lost the wind when she pitched, and then filled again suddenly. And the creaking of the gudgeons and pintles of her rudder as the Triton swept past her transom, and the sloshing of water curling along her sides and round her quarters.
Then Goddard was staring down at him, a gargoyle on the edge of a church roof, and Croucher had appeared beside him at the break in the Lion’s gangway. As Croucher lifted a speaking-trumpet to his mouth, Ramage held his to his ear. Croucher’s was highly polished. When he put it down his fingers would smell brassy, Ramage thought inconsequentially.
“Make a complete sweep southabout round the convoy and stop any ship reducing sail unnecessarily—even if it means getting inside the convoy. Then resume your position.”
Reverse speaking-trumpet; jam to the lips. “Aye aye, sir.”
That’s all. Down from the carronade, wave to Southwick indicating he was taking the conn, speaking-trumpet to lips again, clew up the foretopsail, the ship slowing down, and the Lion drawing ahead again, Goddard watching because he probably expected the Triton to clap on sail and try to cut across the Lion’s bow.
Bowsprit and jib-boom now clear of the Lion’s stern; let fall the main and foretopsails; down with the helm as we brace round on the larboard tack.
Everything drawing nicely, the convoy coming down to him as he beat across its front, and the sun sinking fast—it always seems to speed up when there’s plenty to be done before darkness.
Southwick sidled over and said quietly, careful none of the men heard him, “Wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, sir.”
“No, just routine. Worrying, isn’t it! And the order was passed quickly.”
The last sentence was tactfully acknowledging that Croucher could have kept the Triton close by for twenty minutes or more, delaying passing orders on various pretexts. In that way he could force Ramage to juggle with the helm and sails to stay in position and avoid a collision. He could see himself eventually making a mistake which would result in the Triton’s jib-boom poking through one of the stern-lights in the captain’s cabin—now of course occupied by the Admiral.
“We won’t get far round a’fore it’s dark,” Southwick grumbled. “Weaving our way through the columns just to crack a whip across the backs of these mules—so help me, one o’ them is bound to hit us, or mistake us for a privateer in the darkness and sheer off and collide with someone else.”
Ramage laughed at the dejection in the Master’s voice. “Well, tell the carpenter’s mate to stand by with a boat’s crew; we might need him to patch up one of your mules.”
Ramage walked to the binnacle and bent over the compass bowl. Then he glanced at the leading ship in the first column. They’d pass well clear of her. Then he looked along the columns of ships as the Triton reached fast across the front of the convoy.
“We’ll get all the first column into position, Mr Southwick. Maybe the rest will take the hint.”
“A hint’s a shot fired across their bow,” Southwick said miserably.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS dark before the merchantmen were finally cajoled, bluffed and threatened into position. The Lark and the two frigates had helped by chasing up the ones at the rear, a task they had taken on themselves without orders from the Lion, who could not see them. Ramage had the feeling the frigates helped because they thought the signal must have been made to them as well and they’d missed seeing it.
As they finally passed the last ships in the northernmost column, led by the Topaz, Southwick took off his hat and ran a hand through his flowing white hair.
“It’s not quite what their lordships have in mind,” he said admiringly, “but it’s the best way of getting mules back into position I’ve seen.”
“It could be expensive on jib-booms,” Ramage said.
“Worth it, though. Still, we mustn’t do it too often, or else the element of surprise will be lost.”
Ramage felt embarrassed at Southwick’s praise; he’d done the right thing for completely the wrong reason. Exasperated by one particularly stubborn captain who flatly refused to shake out reefs or stop his men furling topsails, though the ships astern of him were having to bear away to pass because he was down to little more than the steerage way he intended to maintain all night, Ramage had finally lost his temper. He too had ordered his men to clew up sails until the Triton, which had been almost alongside the merchantman—with Ramage standing on the quarterdeck, speaking-trumpet in his hand, throat sore from shouting at the master, almost trembling with rage and frustration—began dropping back.
Eventually the merchantman had drawn ahead, and Ramage had conned the brig into a position directly astern of her. Then he had given the order to let fall the maintopsail, and the Triton had begun to pick up speed again. Gradually the distance between the merchantman’s transom and the Triton’s jib-boom end narrowed: fifty yards, thirty, twenty-five and twenty.
Jackson had been sent out on the bowsprit and passed the word back through a chain of seamen how many feet were left—Ramage did not want any shouting. The gunner’s mate was ordered to fire one of the forward guns with a blank charge in it, and then Ramage had looked up at the clewed-up fore-topsail, crossed his fingers and given the orders to let fall and sheet it home.
He could see the merchantman clearly, and knew her Captain could see the Triton—and the fore-topsail, now beginning to belly out as the men tallied aft the sheets. And because the merchantman’s taffrail was a good deal lower than the outer end of the brig’s jib-boom, he knew the warship would give the impression of being much bigger than she was, an impression that she was towering over the merchantman.
And with Southwick thoroughly enjoying himself and standing by the men at the wheel, an eye on the compass and on the luffs of the sail, and looking as if he was standing on tiptoe to make sure he did not miss a word of any order Ramage might give, Ramage watched the black shape ahead and listened to the message relayed back from Jackson.
“Forty feet, sir, Jackson says, and dead ahead.”
“Very well. Watch your luff, Mr Southwick.”
&n
bsp; “Jackson says thirty feet, and four feet to larboard of the middle of his taffrail.”
“Very well.” Nice of Jackson to be so precise.
Southwick said nervously: “That spare jib-boom of ours ain’t much of a spar, sir.”
“Too late to worry now. Maybe you won’t need it.
“Didn’t really mean it like that, sir.”
“Twenty feet, sir, and right on course, so Jackson says.”
“Very well.”
And Ramage hoped the Triton would not suddenly pitch in a particularly heavy sea and catch the merchantman’s mizen boom with her jib-boom end.
The seaman muttered a stifled oath of surprise.
“Fifteen feet, Jackson says, sir! An’ he’s out on the end of the boom and says should he drop on board o’ ‘er and deliver a message.”
“Tell him not to be impatient,” Ramage snapped.
Jackson would know it was a joke but the rest of the crew wouldn’t; it wouldn’t do any harm to let them think their Captain was a cool chap. Southwick nearly spoiled it by laughing.
Suddenly there was a bellowing from ahead. Ramage turned sideways, jamming the speaking-trumpet to his ear. It was the merchantman’s Captain shouting plaintively.
“Are you trying to ram me?”
Ramage grabbed the seaman’s arm. “Quick—get forward: Jackson’s to tell—no, belay that.”
Ramage couldn’t resist it and didn’t want to spoil the joke. Telling Southwick to take the conn, he ran forward, speaking-trumpet in hand, until he was standing by the forebitts.
As he lifted the speaking-trumpet to his lips he was appalled at the sight of the merchantman: in the darkness her transom seemed like the side of a house. But even before he could speak he heard an agitated hail.
“Triton! Triton! Watch out, you crazy fool! You’ll be aboard us in a moment!”