by Dudley Pope
Hmm, thought Ramage, considering the length of the letter and details, 'Old Jarvie' really means what he says about the importance of these people: he was notorious for the brevity of his orders.
Ramage folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. As orders for the Sibella's late captain, they were simple enough; but for his successor they presented difficulties undreamed of when dictated by Sir John, who was the strictest disciplinarian on the flag list. Ramage realized he did not even know where Rendezvous Number Seven was...
A sudden kick on the shin stopped his reverie.
'Sorry, sir,' said Jackson, 'I'm getting cramp in my leg.'
Ramage knew the men were waiting expectantly. Well, let them wait.
What must he do? What would the Admiral expect him to do? What would the Sibella's late captain, cremated a few moments ago, have done if he were sitting here in the launch's stern sheets?
He could ask the opinions of the senior men, showing them the order: hold a council of war, in fact. But his pride prevented that and anyway his father had once said - 'Nicholas, my boy: if you ever want to achieve anything in the Service, never call a council of war.' Yet when the old boy had acted on his own advice, Ramage thought bitterly, look what had happened...
Then in his imagination he saw, for a fleeting second, a group of thoroughly frightened civilians staring seaward through the narrow window of a peasant's hut, plagued by mosquitoes, too frightened to light a lamp at night, and waiting for a ship of the Royal Navy to rescue them from - from France's guillotines or possibly the unspeakable horrors of the Grand Duke of Tuscany's dungeons, since the Grand Duke's attempts to remain neutral had been feeble, and he had even entertained Napoleon to dinner, from all accounts.
Who were they, anyway? He'd forgotten to look at the names in the margin.
'Lantern, Jackson.'
He unfolded the letter once more and read the names of five men and a woman listed one below the other in the margin: the Duke of Venturino, the Marquis of Sassofortino, Count Chiusi, Count Pisano, Count Pitti and the Marchioness of Volterra.
It took him a moment or two to register the shock of reading the anglicized version of the Marchesa di Volterra's name: he had a sudden picture in his mind of a tall, white-haired woman with a patrician face whom he had known, for much of his childhood, as 'Aunt Lucia'. She was no relation, but as one of his mother's closest friends she was a frequent visitor when his parents lived in Siena; and they in turn had often stayed at the Marchesa's palace at Volterra. So now the little boy she used to bully because he could not (would not, too) quote yards of Dante, was back — almost back, anyway — in Italy, to haul her off the beach....
Sir John Jervis's determination that they should be rescued made sense now: the Marchesa, and the Duke of Venturino, were two of the most influential and powerful figures in Tuscany: it had been said for years that if they could agree with each other for long enough, they could probably overthrow the Grand Duke and rid Tuscany for ever of the dreary Hapsburgs.
Ramage was glad he'd decided to attempt the rescue before reading the names. If he'd previously decided against it, he would have changed his mind later. There was some satisfaction in attempting what he hoped was the right thing for the right reason.
Yet when it came to rescuing refugees, it shouldn't matter who they are: when a head rolls into the wicker basket from the guillotine blade, a peasant's head is a human head as much as the duke's; which was what Shakespeare meant when he made Shylock say 'Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands?'
Ramage could imagine the president of the court trying him for the loss of the Sibella asking, 'Why did you decide to attempt to execute with an open boat the Admiral's orders, which were intended to be carried out by a frigate?'
'Well, sir, I was thinking about Shylock...'
He could imagine the sneers; could hear, almost, the whispered 'Yes, he's his father's son all right.' And that's the crux of it: he was his father's son and so much more vulnerable than other lieutenants because he had many more potential enemies waiting to strike at him to wound his father. A Service vendetta was a long-drawn-out affair and when admirals were involved everyone was forced to take sides because promotion and patronage were involved. To become the protege' of a particular admiral was a good thing, as long as the admiral was in favour, because he would push opportunities your way. But if the admiral supported a political party, as several of them did, then the moment his party lost power, the fact you were one of his proteges was a millstone round your neck.
Poor Father: a braver man never lived, and many still considered him the most brilliant strategist and tactician the Navy ever had. Which was, of course, the reason for his downfall. When you give the command of a fleet to a born leader with a keen brain, and provide him with a textbook containing a limited set of regulations telling him how to fight a battle, you're asking for trouble.
Ramage was seven when his father was brought to trial; but later, when he was old enough to understand, he had read the minutes of the trial of John Uglow Ramage, tenth Earl of Blazey and Admiral of the White many times. It was easy to see how the court had found Father guilty; indeed, since he had refused to be tied down by the Fighting Instructions and had used his own tactics instead, they had no alternative. But the King's refusal to quash the verdict - which only he had the power to do - was naked politics: Father had an independent mind and had refused to pay court to either Whigs or Tories, so he expected help from no one.
Ramage realized that since he had only four open boats to carry out orders intended for a frigate his own position was, in a microcosm, similar to the one facing his father fifteen years earlier. Then, the Government, ignoring all warnings about the size of the French forces, sent a small fleet to the West Indies under the Earl of Blazey. And when the Earl arrived to find himself attacked by a French Fleet which was twice as powerful and in circumstances not covered in the Fighting Instructions - which dealt only with a few eventualities — he had used brilliant and original tactics to extricate himself, losing only one line-of-battle ship.
But, of course, he had lost the battle: against those odds no one could have won it. Any British admiral feeling himself bound by the Fighting Instructions - but unable to get any guidance from them — would have fought an orthodox battle and lost many more ships. In fact, considering he only lost one ship, Father had won a tactical victory. However, there was a fatal combination: first, as usual, the Government had sent too few ships, but when the mobs began to yell in protest over the defeat, it was determined to shift the blame on to someone else's shoulders; secondly, the Admiral who fought and lost the battle had ignored the Fighting Instructions. That was enough for the politicians: they had a ready-made scapegoat.
The mobs were never told the Fighting Instructions were not flexible enough to cover that kind of battle; instead a flow of pamphlets and newspaper articles led them to think that had he followed the Instructions he would have won. The fact that his own tactics were brilliant and avoided the heavylosses an attempt to follow the Fighting Instructions would have entailed was never brought out - except when Father made his defence at the trial. Even then the newspapers, which were in the Government's pay anyway, distorted or omitted what he said.
The old chap's speech had been almost too clever; he presentedsuch a well-reasoned argument that the layman's suspicion of an expert - and the professional's jealousy - were soonaroused.
How had Father described the Fighting Instructions? Oh yes, he'd likened them to instructions for a coachman when a highwayman standing in his path orders him to halt. Ramage could almost see the actual print in the leather-bound copy of theminutes of the trial, which was kept in the library at home. 'The Fighting Instructions in effect order the coachman,'; Father had said, 'to aim his blunderbuss directly over his horses' heads, and fire at the highwayman. But they do not tell him what to do if there are two or a dozen highwaymen standing to one side of the path or another. They assume it will never happen. But at the
same time their orders contain a clause which ensures that, if it happens, whatever the coachmandoes is wrong: if he fires to the left, to the right, surrenders orruns away.'
The court could have sentenced him to death; but since the affair of Admiral Byng the Articles of War had been amended to allow a lesser penalty. The court had ordered him to be dismissed the Service. Ramage had often wondered whether this was, for his father, a lesser penalty than death.
The man who had emerged from the trial as his father's enemy had been a member of the Court, a captain low down on the post list but high up in the King's esteem: Captain Goddard, now a rear-admiral, who was a man with little intelligence or ability but full of corrosive jealousy. Marriage into the outer fringe of the royal family had, so far as promotion was concerned, made up for his other deficiencies.
Since Goddard had so much influence with the crazy King - indeed, it was said he was one of the few men who could get any sense at all out of His Majesty during his not infrequent bouts of insanity — he had attracted a large following in the Navy when he became a rear-admiral: many captains - and flag officers - were prepared to sink their pride in order to provide Goddard with the sycophantic circle of admirers his pride required, receiving preferment and promotion in return.
Unfortunately, Goddard was serving in the Mediterranean at the moment, although apparently neither the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir John Jervis, nor the third in command, Captain Horatio Nelson, had much time for him. Ramage was not sure, but suspected it was due only to Sir John Jervis's influence that he was himself employed. But the fourth in seniority, Captain Croucher, was a close friend of Goddard's. If he was president at the court martial trying him for the loss of the Sibella, Ramage thought, the verdict could be given even before the first witness was sworn in.
Anyway, Ramage told himself, it's time we were under way: the seamen have had enough rest. Those in authority can always put a subordinate in the wrong: that's an indisputable fact and it's no good brooding over it.
Chapter 4
'LET ME HAVE the charts, Jackson.' The American handed over the canvas bag, and Ramage selected one from the roll which covered the area from the Vada Rocks, off Livorno - or Leghorn as the British insisted on calling it - to Civita Vecchia. Before looking at it he glanced at the Master's log and found it had been filled in up to six o'clock that evening, when the last entry gave a bearing and distance of the peak of Monte Argentario and the north end of the island of Giglio and added: 'Enemy sail in sight to north-west.'
Ramage unrolled the chart, folded it on his knee, and pulled the throwing knife from its sheath inside the top of his boot, using the blade to measure the distance from Monte Argentario at 6 pm, taking it off the latitude scale at the side of the chart. He then twisted the knife round so he could use the blade to transfer the bearing from the compass rose.
He then pricked a point on the chart. That was the 6 pm position of the Sibella. After estimating the course she'd steered and the distance covered until the French boarded, he pricked the chart once again. That was where she had sunk. Then he made a third mark - their present position, as accurately as guesswork based on experience could permit.
Where did it put them? Roughly midway between the Argentario promontory and the island of Giglio. The channel between the two - he used the knife to measure it approximately - is twelve miles wide. So they were about six miles from Capo d'Uomo, the high cliff where one of Argentario's mountainous ridges meets the sea.
Ironic, he thought, that we've been rowing north-westward, away from Capalbio and the refugees, for the past half hour.
The chart showed that to reach the Tower at Capalbio they must first round the southern end of Argentario, which is almost an island joined to the mainland by two causeways. Odd how on the chart Argentario looked like a fat bat hanging upside down from a beam, with its two legs forming the causeways and the beam the mainland. The Tower is on the coast about five miles south of where the southern causeway meets the mainland, with the village of Capalbio on a hill five or six miles inland.
Well, it's more than fifteen miles, and without knowing the coast it will be impossible to find the Tower before daylight That means we must hide somewhere before daylight. But where? The south-eastern side of Argentario is too risky: Port' Ercole, just round the corner, would have plenty of fishing boats coming and going. No, we'll have to keep clear of Argentario and spend daylight on Friday hiding at Giannutri, another small island athwart the channel to the south-east. From there, on Friday night, we can reach the Formiche di Burano, a tiny reef only a few feet high and offshore of Capalbio. From our present position to Giannutri is ... about seven miles: we can hide near Punta Secca.
He saw they would have to cover twelve miles on Friday night to reach the Formiche, and another three to the Tower. But in the meantime he would have a chance to study the mainland through his glass.
That meant he had Friday night to find the refugees; they would have to stay in hiding Saturday and sail from Capalbio on Saturday night...
'Bosun, Carpenter's Mate, Wilson - come on board!'
A sandy beach at Capalbio - that would mean hauling the boat up. Only the gig would be light enough to be hauled on shore by its crew. Six men to row, plus Jackson and himself, for the trip to Capalbio. Then half a dozen refugees. Fourteen in the gig for the return journey... it would be overloaded only if they ran into bad weather, since it could carry sixteen when used for cutting out expeditions. But he had no choice: the boat would have to be hauled up and hidden: finding the Italians might take time - he dare not gamble on landing, finding them and getting to sea again the same night.
The Bosun hauled the cutter up to the launch's transom and scrambled on board, followed by the Carpenter's Mate and Wilson. As the three men sat waiting in the darkness, Ramage would have given a lot to know their thoughts....
'I've opened the Captain's orders and propose carrying them out...'
He tended to have difficulty in pronouncing the letter 'r' when he became excited: the faint hint of 'pwopose' warned him to keep calm.
'I shall take Jackson and six men in the gig. Bosun, you'll transfer to the launch, and Wilson can take over your cutter.
'Bosun, you'll be in command of the three boats.'
Damned difficult giving orders to men in the dark when you couldn't see their faces.
'You will take them to Bastia, in Corsica.'
'But it's—'
'A long way: over seventy miles, but it's the nearest place where you'll find any British ships, and as you know the Corsican coast, you won't get lost. Take the muster book and master's log. When you arrive, report to the senior British naval officer, giving him a full account of what has happened and — now listen carefully, this is most important - ask him to communicate to Sir John Jervis at once that Lieutenant Ramage is proceeding in execution of Sir John's orders concerning the Sibella. Also request him to send a ship to rendezvous with me five miles off the north end of Giglio at dawn on Sunday and, if I'm not there, again at dawn on Monday.
'If you are unlucky enough to get caught by the French on the way, throw the log over the side, and at all costs convince them you are the only survivors from the Sibella. Don't mention me or the gig. Now—'
Swiftly he settled the details of the courses the Bosun was to steer. He remembered to ask if any of the boats had wine on board and found the Carpenter's Mate's boat had a barrel, which he was ordered to empty over the side. His protests were met with a curt, 'Can you guarantee to control a couple of dozen drunken men?'
After telling the Bosun to send the six best men over to the gig, Ramage shook hands with the three men in the darkness, and prepared to scramble over the boats to join his latest command. This, he thought to himself, must be a record - to have held the command of a frigate, a launch, and finally a gig, all in the space of an hour.
Just before ordering the other three boats away, Ramage remembered to gather them round and, to back up the Bosun's authority, warned all
the seamen that they were still governed by the Articles of War. They listened in silence broken only by the slapping of the water against the sides of the boats and the occasional scraping as one or other of the boats fended off.
Then, to Ramage's surprise, just as he was about to tell the Bosun to carry on, one of the seamen called out in a low voice, 'Three cheers for 'is Lordship - 'ip, 'ip ... oorayl' The men had kept their voices low; yet he sensed the emotion in their voices. He was so startled - both by the unexpected cheers and the significant use of his title — that he was groping for a suitable reply when several of the men called across, 'Good luck, sir!' which allowed him to respond with a gruff, 'Thank you, lads: now bend your backs; you've a long way to go-'
With that he sat down in the stern sheets, took the tiller and waited for the other boats to get clear before setting the gig's crew to work at the oars.
Glancing over towards Argentario he saw a faint, silvery glow below the horizon which was just beginning to dim some of the stars: the moon was rising behind the mountains, and a few minutes later he could distinguish the faces of the men sitting on the nearest thwarts, and noticed they were shiny with perspiration.
Well, he told himself, there are fewer worries in commanding a gig twenty-four feet long and weighing about thirteen hundredweight than a frigate of 150 feet displacing nearly seven hundred tons: less comfortable though, he thought, easing himself round so that the transom knee did not dig into his hip.
As the moon, a great oyster-pink orb, rose from behind Argentario it sharpened the silhouetted peaks of the mountains. They were, he mused, comfortable mountains with the peaks and ridges well rounded, compared with the jagged, tooth-edged Alps: more like gargantuan ant-hills. But as the moon climbed higher, shortening the shadows, the silhouette faded, and the whole of Argentario was tinted in a warm, silvery-pink light. A silver light on Monte Argentario ... Why was it named the Silver Mountain? Was silver ever mined there? Surely not. Perhaps the wind ruffling the leaves of the olive trees made it look silvery in daylight - he remembered noticing their foliage sometimes gave that effect to a hillside.