Governor Ramage R. N.

by Dudley Pope

  Suddenly he realized that the grey of dawn was spreading and he could make out the dark bulk of the wheel and the group of shadowy men standing up at it; the seas had grey caps and he could see more detail of their wild movements.

  Southwick lurched over to him and he could see enough of his face to be shocked by its weariness. The Master seemed to have aged ten years overnight. The ends of his white hair hung out from under his sou’wester in spiky tails, giving him the appearance of an anxious porcupine, and the eyes and cheeks were sunken.

  “Lookouts aloft, sir?”

  “No,” Ramage yelled back, “there’ll be nothing in sight, and even if there was, we couldn’t do anything except run before this weather.”

  “Aye, sir, that’s my feeling.”

  But both men were wrong. Within twenty minutes, when they could see several hundred yards in the grey light, a lookout came scrambling back along the larboard side, clutching on to the main rope rigged fore and aft as though he was climbing.

  “Larboard bow, sir,” he gasped. “Ship, mebbe five hundred yards; a merchantman under bare poles I reckon, but I only saw her as we came up on the crest of a wave.”

  Ramage was leaning against the carronade in a daze caused partly by weariness and partly by the noise of the wind.

  “Splendid,” he said automatically. “You’re keeping a good lookout.”

  As the man turned to go back Ramage beckoned to Jackson, whose eyes and nose could just be seen peering out from a glistening black cylinder. The American must have tarred his sou’wester and long oilskin coat very recently.

  “Up aloft,” Ramage shouted. “Larboard bow, five hundred yards, probably a merchantman. And have a good look round for anyone else. There’s a glass in the binnacle box drawer—if you can use it.”

  In the five minutes Jackson was aloft it grew appreciably lighter, and the lighter it became the lower sank Ramage’s spirits. He lurched to the taffrail, hollow-eyed and unshaven, grasped it with both hands and looked aft, forcing himself to stare at what frightened him.

  The seas were so huge he knew he’d wronged many men in the past when they’d described such weather and he’d assumed—with smug superiority—that they were exaggerating. Even allowing for how cold and tired and hungry he was, and knowing this affected his judgment, he was certain that what he looked at was worse. Those men had been describing hurricanes, and he had to face up to the fact that the Triton was now in a hurricane. This was no brief tropical storm which seemed worse than it was because the preceding weeks of balmy weather had softened a man. Some time during the night, the storm had turned into a hurricane, just as earlier the gale had increased to a storm.

  He stared at the waves, fascinated and yet fearful, like a rabbit facing a weasel. All his seagoing life he had dreaded this day. Here at last was what few sailors had experienced, and what fewer still had survived. In the Indian Ocean it was called a cyclone, in the Pacific it was a typhoon and in the Caribbean a hurricane. Like death, it went by different names in different languages, but was still the same thing.

  The seas were so enormous he did not even try to guess their height, but he had to tilt his head back to be able to look up at the crests from under the brim of his sou’wester. They came up astern like great fast-moving mountain ranges, one steeply sloping forward edge threatening to scoop up the ship, the curling, breaking crest ready to sweep the decks clear of men and equipment. It was followed by another whose forward edge seemed almost vertical, like a cliff, and so sheer the Triton’s stern could never lift in time to avoid it crashing down on the ship, crushing it to matchwood. But, in a series of miracles, her stern did lift, and the crests did pass under her, producing even more prodigious pitching.

  On and on came the mountains of water, each one fearful because its power was in itself, its own enormous weight set in motion by the wind. He watched each crest, a curling, roaring, hissing jumble of bubbling white water. The Triton was making about four knots with not a stitch of canvas set and her wake showed on each wave’s face as a double line of inward-spinning whorls, like the hair-springs of watches.

  Every few minutes an odd and often small wave, instead of coming up dead astern and meeting the ship squarely, ran in from a slight angle and she lifted slowly and awkwardly, the crest slapping hard on the quarter and squirting water up the space round the rudder post.

  The quarter was where the danger was: all of Southwick’s efforts with the helmsmen were devoted to making sure the Triton drove off dead to leeward, so every wave arrived squarely at the transom. A heavy wave catching her on one quarter, instead of rushing beneath the ship and lifting her squarely, would push the stern with it, forcing the bow round the opposite way. In a second the ship would broach, to lie broadside and vulnerable to the seas.

  These seas were big enough, much more than big enough, to lift her up and throw her flat, so that with her heavy masts and lower yards lying in the water and acting as a weight on one end of a seesaw, she would not come up without the masts being cut away. Come up that is, providing the pathetically small shell of a hull did not fill with water …

  A moment’s inattention on the part of the officer of the watch or quartermaster, a momentary mistake by the men at the wheel or one of them slipping on the streaming, sloping deck and hindering his mates as they spun the spokes one way or the other and the Triton would broach. Or the wheel ropes would part, so that the thick tiller would slam across and splinter as the waves shoved the rudder hard over.

  A shroud parting and a mast going by the board … The rudder itself being smashed … Springing the butt end of a plank below the waterline, letting tons of water pour in, or even springing one above the waterline, with these seas … A carronade breaking adrift from its lashings and crashing from one side of the deck to the other, smashing bulwarks and killing men … Each possibility flashed through Ramage’s mind as fast as a fencer’s lunge and riposte.

  Suddenly he realized that in facing aft like this he was staring not at the sea but at fear. Nothing was to be gained by it, except perhaps, after thirty seconds or so, an additional warning about broaching. Making the seamen look aft for five minutes before a spell at the wheel would not encourage them to be more careful; they’d be so damned scared they’d probably make mistakes.

  Jackson was tapping his arm to attract his attention above all the noise: that in itself was significant. Few seamen in few ships would risk doing that, however great the emergency, because they had been taught from their first day in their first ship that an unscrupulous lieutenant could turn it into “striking an officer …” an offence carrying the death penalty.

  “Four ships!” Jackson shouted.

  Ramage ducked down below the taffrail, motioning the American down beside him, where they were slightly sheltered from the howling wind.

  “Are you sure?”

  Jackson wiped his eyes with his knuckles; he too was tired, his face pinched with weariness and cold. Cold, in the Tropics …

  “Certain, sir. One fine on the larboard bow, one on the starboard beam—I think it’s the Greyhound—and two on the starboard quarter. The one on the larboard bow is close—the Topaz, sir, bare poles, and seemingly all right. Rest are maybe a mile off. Reckon there are several more ships around, but a mile’s as far as I can see with this light and the rain and the spray.”

  So Yorke was all right, and Maxine …

  “No sign of the Lion?”

  It was an unnecessary question, since the American would have reported if he’d seen her, but Jackson shook his head. He had been with Ramage too long, and knew too much about the responsibility that rested on the young Lieutenant’s shoulders, to be impatient.

  Looking at Ramage’s haggard face in the half light, the American was thankful, in a curious way, for his own limitations. Leaving aside his country of birth, which legally prevented it ever happening, he knew he did not have the capacity for command. It took a type of man that he understood but was not. The man who, presented with a
terrible decision to make and limited time, went off to a quiet corner—and came back inside the required time with the decision made, much as another man might go below and change his shirt. No doubts, no asking other people’s opinions, no delays, no second thoughts … and of all the leaders he’d met, Mr Ramage was the coolest of them all. Jackson knew he sometimes had second thoughts, not about the rightness of a decision, but more often because men—his own men—might get killed or wounded as a result of it. A youth who was a father to sixty or more men, all but a couple of whom were a good deal older than him.

  That was where Mr Southwick was so good, Jackson realized: the old Master understood very well this humane aspect of Mr Ramage’s personality, and the American had noticed he was usually around at the right moment—and with the right remark—whenever the situation arose. Ironical, Jackson thought to himself, that a young captain needed an older man to help him be ruthless when necessary. In Jackson’s previous experience of young officers, the older men were usually trying to persuade them to be less ruthless; to be more careful of their men’s lives.

  Telling Mr Ramage it was the Topaz over on the larboard bow certainly cheered him up: Jackson was pleased with the way he’d done it—and pleased he was the one to pass the word. He still wasn’t sure what it was all about, but the Captain obviously thought a lot of the ship—the people in her, anyway. Must have been a bad half an hour for him when the blasted Peacock …

  When Ramage lurched over to the binnacle to discuss Jackson’s report with Southwick, the American worked his way a few feet forward to the spot between the mainmast and the coaming round the wardroom companion-way. There was precious little shelter anywhere on deck in this weather, he thought gloomily. Just that somehow the thickness of the mainmast and the yard overhead, gave the impression of sheltering under a tree.

  “Move over,” Jackson shouted at the crouching figure of Stafford.

  “Oh, it’s you. Wotcher see up there?”

  “The Topaz on the larboard bow, the Greyhound frigate on starboard beam and a couple of mules astern.”

  “The flagship?” Rossi asked. “Is sunk?”

  “Not in sight, anyway.”

  “We can ‘ope,” Stafford said. “Well—’ere, wotch it!”

  He leapt up and a moment later a mass of water a foot deep swept forward along the deck.

  Jackson and Rossi scrambled up, cursing, and Stafford, clinging to the mast, roared with laughter as water poured out of the bottoms of their trousers.

  Jackson watched a seaman scrambling aft, working his way hand over hand along the lifeline.

  “That’s Luckhurst, one of the lookouts!”

  With that he followed the man the last few feet to where Ramage stood with Southwick.

  “Lookout, larboard bow, sir—reckon that merchantman over the larboard bow’s in trouble, sir.”

  Jackson saw Ramage stiffen; at once, he noticed, the hand went instinctively to rub the scar over the brow, forgetting the sou’wester.

  “What trouble, man?”

  “Only glimpsed her, sir, just as we was on a crest: looks as though her main yard’s come adrift.”

  Ramage nodded and signalled to Jackson, pointing aloft.

  “Up, quick look at the Topaz and down again to report!”

  It seemed to Ramage he had hardly had time to think of the problem, let alone work out the answer, before Jackson was standing in front of him again.

  “Her foreyard’s already down, sir, and the main yard’s swinging on the jears: lifts and braces gone. Bowsprit end also gone. Men working everywhere.”

  “Does she look under control?”

  “Four men at the wheel. I think she’s under control—as much as anyone.”

  “Very well,” Ramage said.

  “Shall I go back aloft, sir?”

  Ramage paused, looking up the mast. The wind was so strong it was a miracle Jackson could climb up. It was unbelievable he was volunteering again. “Yes, take a couple of men with you as messengers.”

  Jackson worked his way to the foot of the mainmast, stirred Stafford and Rossi with his foot and jerked his thumb upwards.

  Cursing, the two men followed him, and a couple of minutes later the trio were trying to make themselves comfortable in the maintop with the mast gyrating wildly as the ship pitched and rolled.

  As soon as he’d wriggled himself into position, Stafford looked round at the horizon, and, overwhelmed at what he saw, could only mutter, “Cor!”

  By now it was quite light but the horizon was hidden by the rain and spray which reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. The sea was like nothing Stafford had ever seen before. It had no regular shape, nor did it seem to have regular substance: instead it twisted and curled like molten marble boiling in a huge cauldron.

  Each man had to hold on with both hands and the wind was now so strong that it was impossible to breathe facing into it: they had to turn their faces to leeward, breathe and then look again. The noise in their ears was a combination of a high-pitched scream and a deep roar; a noise they’d never heard before and would never forget.

  Their eyes soon became raw because the spray was so fine at this height that their eyelids did not close instinctively and there was no way of sheltering. Forced by the pressure of the wind to breathe through their mouths, their saliva began to taste salty.

  Jackson carefully passed the telescope to Stafford and pointed to the Topaz, gesturing to Rossi to help hold onto the Cockney so he could have both hands free for the telescope.

  As soon as Stafford finished his examination, Jackson looked slowly round the whole horizon, making sure Stafford also saw everything he’d spotted, particularly another mule astern—making three—and two more on the larboard quarter. Then he signalled Stafford to go down and report to the Captain.

  Six mules, including the Topaz, and the Greyhound. Jackson thought of the rest as he looked round again. Forty-four mules, a line-of-battle ship, two frigates and a lugger out of sight. He did not know much about navigation, but they couldn’t have dispersed much in the few hours that had passed since the whole convoy was lying becalmed … Were these seven ships, and the Triton, the only ones to survive this bloody awful night?

  By the time Stafford reached the deck his brain was numb from the noise and buffeting of the wind. He clutched one of the shrouds and looked around him, saw the Captain clinging to the binnacle, and gradually realized that Mr Ramage was waving to him; making sweeping movements with his arm.

  Stafford seized the lifeline rigged along the deck and hauled himself aft. The wind had increased while he had been aloft he was certain. He was not holding the rope to keep his balance: he had to use it to move aft.

  Stafford was exhausted by the time he crouched down beside the binnacle with Ramage, bellowing his report. Finally he reached the Topaz: “Main yard swinging but I think they’re managing to rig new braces. Foreyard’s gone over the side: it’s smashed twenty feet of bulwark, starboard side. Jib-boom’s gone but the bowsprit’s safe now from the look of it and—”

  He broke off as Rossi appeared beside them. The Italian, white-faced from weariness and cold, reported that the main yard had fallen to starboard and parted several shrouds, and Jackson was afraid the mainmast would go by the board.

  For a few moments Ramage looked at Rossi as though he was a ghost; then he nodded and stood up, looking over the larboard bow.

  Stafford glimpsed a vague pale shape fine on the bow and nearer than he expected it, and pointed.

  Ramage nodded and shouted: “One of you fetch Jackson down: nothing more he can do up there.”

  Then he inched his way to Southwick, who now had a rope round his waist, made fast to the wheel pedestal.

  The need to break off every few seconds while Southwick—who was looking astern and watching every wave as it swept up to the ship—shouted and signalled orders to the helmsmen, gave Ramage extra seconds to think, but when he’d finished and stood there looking at the Master, his mind was empt
y of everything but the bare facts.

  Finally Southwick gave his opinion in rushes between helm orders.

  “Up to them … nothing we can do … couldn’t even throw a heaving line over, even if we dare turn a point either side of the course…. Only a matter of time before something like it happens to us…. Every rope must be chafing badly…. miracle anyone’s afloat…. If the Topaz loses her masts she probably stands more chance of surviving than with ‘em—less windage…. Up to us to stay afloat and pick up survivors after this has blown out …”

  As he listened Ramage felt both relief and guilt: the Master was shouting aloud exactly what he thought himself. This had been his first reaction, and he’d discarded it. But he and Southwick were right: even if they saw the Topaz sinking, the Triton could do nothing to help: it wasn’t a question of wish, will or skill; it was physically impossible.

  Southwick was shaking his arm.

  “It’s a good thing we’re not closer: we couldn’t avoid running aboard her if she was ahead.”

  The Master was right.

  “I’m sure Mr Yorke understands. He knows he couldn’t help us either.”

  The Master was right. The Master was right. The Master—Ramage felt as if he were falling, but it was only that he was so tired and dazed by the wind. He had almost gone to sleep as he stood listening to Southwick. Gone to sleep while Yorke was fighting to save the Topaz; sleeping while Maxine and her parents prayed for their lives; while … steady!

  He took several deep breaths and knew he was wearier than he ever believed a man could be and still function. He knew now how unwise he’d been at the beginning of the hurricane: he’d stayed on deck far longer than was necessary—instead of getting some sleep. Now, when the lives of everyone in the Triton depended on his alertness, he was asleep on his feet. When had he last slept? Yesterday or last night or the night before? What day was it, anyway? He couldn’t remember, but it hardly mattered. He had no idea of the time, but Southwick must be exhausted: he would have to take over the conn soon and give the old man a spell. As he shouted his intention, the Master answered: “Appleby, sir; let him stand a watch!”