Ramage's Challenge r-15

by Dudley Pope

  "Perhaps when we destroyed some of the French signal towers?"

  "No - that was along the French coast. I remember it well. No, wasn't there something round here?"

  "We captured some bomb ketches and used them to bombard a port on the other side of Argentario - that was some time ago."

  "That was it," the Admiral exclaimed. "What was the name of the place?"

  Suddenly Ramage felt the skin of his face grow cold and the hair at the back of his neck seemed to stiffen, as though he was a dog hearing an intruder.

  "The modern name is Port' Ercole, sir, but the Latin name was the Port of Hercules."

  The admiral sighed. "Now we really begin the twelve labours ..."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The three admirals, after meeting with Ramage in the great cabin, agreed that Port' Ercole was the likeliest place: likely on several counts. Ramage showed them the original rough chart which Southwick had drawn for the bomb ketches' attack and which had ever since remained rolled up in the chart rack fitted to the deck beams above the desk.

  The three of them remembered their brief stay at Orbetello, and they exclaimed when Ramage showed how the northern causeway led to Santo Stefano while the southern curved round to Port' Ercole.

  Then Ramage pointed out the forts, built by the Aragonese even earlier than the fortezza at Santo Stefano. "Forte della Stella, along this track, some distance south of the port, is still in good condition and habitable. In fact it almost certainly has a French garrison because it commands the approach to the port. Then up here -" he indicated the larger fort built high on a hill on the causeway side, north of the port, "- there is Forte di Monte Filippo. Tho' which Filippo that is I don't know. Probably not the second, who built the Santo Stefano fortress, because I'm sure these two were built much earlier."

  Lord Smarden (who, Sir Henry had told Ramage, had been on his honeymoon when war broke out again: his first wife had died several years ago and his second wife, younger than anyone had expected, was "a delightful woman") jabbed a finger on the chart, indicating Forte della Stella.

  "This is quite a way beyond the port. Doesn't that rule it out as a prison for hostages - after all, it means carrying provisions a long way?"

  "Of the two, sir, with respect, I'd rather put my money on it. As you can see, there's a rocky islet just offshore there. That's Isolotto, and the Forte della Stella covers the channel between it and Argentario. For that reason alone the French would garrison it. And given the way they commandeer people's donkeys and mules, I don't think carrying more provisions would bother them. The fort obviously has water from a well - they all do."

  "Why not Forte di Monte Filippo?"

  "Well, in the attack with the bomb ketches which Sir Henry mentioned, we showed the French it wasn't much good for defending the port. I think they'd now rely on Forte della Stella, and also La Rocca, which is a half-hearted sort of fort just here, right above the actual entrance to the port."

  Lord Smarden nodded. "Well, this seems to be your country. I'm a fox-hunting man, Ramage, so I'll regard myself as your guest - and riding one of your horses, too!"

  Ramage nodded to acknowledge the compliment and then said: "But I don't want to raise any false hopes, gentlemen. Forte della Stella is built above steep cliffs which run all round the coast of Argentario. La Rocca is on cliffs right above the port; Forte di Monte Filippo - well, as its name shows, it is built on a mountain."

  "But none of these so-called mountains are very high," Sir William Keeler protested. "It isn't as though we have to storm up sheer cliffs."

  "No, sir, monte often means just a steep hill. But -" he glanced at Sir Henry, "- we shan't be 'storming' anywhere."

  "How the deuce are you going to rescue 'em, then?"

  "They are hostages, sir," Ramage said patiently. "The point about hostages is that those who have them can use them as bargaining counters."

  "I know that!" Sir William said crossly. "I learned the King's English before you were born."

  The sneer was very apparent, but Ramage ignored it. "If we 'storm' anywhere, or if we try anything but a surprise attack, sir, the French will use the hostages as - well, hostages. Either we shall be told to go away or the hostages will be killed, or they will be killed anyway and even if we successfully capture wherever they are held, the only thing we can do -" he paused, so that his words would hit Sir William like a blow, "- is to give them a decent burial."

  "You don't have to put it so crudely, Ramage. After all, the French aren't holding your wife as a hostage."

  Before he could stop himself Ramage said bitterly: "No, they've probably killed her."

  "Tell us," Admiral Faversham said, badly shocked but anxious to discover what had happened. "You must remember we've had no news since the war began. We don't want to distress you unduly but - well, didn't you marry the Marquis of Rockley's daughter?"

  Using the fewest words possible, Ramage told how he and Sarah had been on their honeymoon in France when the war unexpectedly broke out again, and how they had escaped from Brest in the Murex brig to join the Fleet as coincidentally it arrived to blockade Brest once again. The three admirals were appalled to hear that the Murex had been carried into Brest earlier and handed over to the French by her mutinous crew.

  "Much as I hate hearing of our men mutinying," said Sir Henry, "at least you stopped the French gaining a brig. And those French seamen of yours dressed up as soldiers who brought us out of Castello, are the same Frenchmen who helped you to take the brig? 'Pon my soul, Ramage, either you have the luck of the devil or you know how to choose people." The admiral paused a moment and realized he had made a tactless blunder. "Your wife, Lady Sarah - you know for sure that the Murex was sunk?"

  "The brig could have been captured, sir. But we haven't heard a word about prisoners being taken. With my wife was a post-captain who'd been commanding this ship temporarily, and of course the prize crew taking the Murex to England. Their names haven't been mentioned in the exchange lists sent from Paris . . ."

  Sir William looked at Ramage. "My apologies. Fact is, we're all on edge, hearing nothing for more than a year." He suddenly realized that it was worse for Ramage. "I hope you have news soon. This uncertainty - it's like a tumour, it just grows and grows."

  "Yes, sir, I know, and perhaps I was being too emphatic about the need for surprise. But the way we marched you all out of Castello, signing a receipt for the commandant. . ."

  "It was the only way, but will it work again?" Admiral Faversham asked. "Of course the decision is up to you. Perhaps you've already decided?"

  Ramage looked round at the three admirals. He saw three desperately worried husbands, and knew they represented five more. In rank any of the admirals could be the commander-in-chief of the Fleet on a foreign station where Ramage was serving but now, as they watched him, they were anxious husbands. For now, it was easier to think of them as husbands rather than admirals because none would try to override the Board's orders to him, and in a year or two he could find himself serving under any one of them. Tact did not come naturally to Ramage, and he knew it. Good manners, yes; he had learned them as a child and they came naturally, like saying "please" and "thank you", and standing when a woman came into the room, and eating bread with his left hand and so on. But tact - well, often words were spoken before Ramage realized that they had turned into bricks the moment they left his mouth.

  "Gentlemen, we looked for you in Pitigliano and Santo Stefano and finally found you in Giglio without having any clearly defined plans, apart from our group of make-believe hostages. We hoped to get you out by guile, but we couldn't rule out violence.

  "One of my men was shot in the arm while discovering you were not in Santo Stefano. I said guile or violence but violence was going to be the last resort. We knew we were after hostages who were men, not women. I had in mind that if there was any shooting, most of you would probably escape in the confusion."

  Sir Henry looked at the other two admirals and then at Ramage.
"Now you have just found out something the Admiralty didn't know, or didn't mention in your orders: that there are several women to be rescued."

  "Exactly, sir. Like you, the women don't expect to be rescued, so they'll be startled, they'll be encumbered by bulky dresses, and," he added ruefully, "no woman can leave a room she's lived in for a long time without running back for some valuable she's forgotten."

  "You've obviously been thinking about all this," Sir Henry commented. "And you've just described my wife!" He saw the expressions on the faces of the other two admirals. "All wives," he added, "except Lady Sarah. I've just this moment remembered how you first met her - rescued her and her parents and many other people from renegades and pirates at an island off the Brazilian coast. Don't give up hope, Ramage."

  "No sir. That and memories are all I have." He thought for a moment. He was not in the mood for Major-General Cargill's crude manners or the two young men's enthusiasm. In fact, apart from Sir Henry he really wanted nothing to do with the freed hostages: he wanted no personal pleas or objections or suggestions to affect his decisions.

  That the hostages might be in Port' Ercole - yes, it was a guess, but a good one. The answer seemed plausible. The second guess (or choice: the word "guess" carried a hint of a gamble) was exactly where the hostages were imprisoned. This time there was no clue from the Pitigliano commandant. The fortresses were the most likely and, of the two, della Stella seemed the obvious one. But he knew there were some big private houses in the hills behind Port' Ercole. Surely the Borghese family owned much of the land round the port, and they would have one or two houses there. Houses big enough to hold a dozen or so hostages and their guards? Italian houses have big rooms and high ceilings, and all too often shutters take the place of glass in the windows - in winter such houses were not used. Large rooms, balconies, houses designed for occasional summer living by wealthy people casual about their possessions - they would hardly make secure prisons for important hostages. Did that rule out the big houses? Not really - the French guards, with muskets and swords, could terrorize women prisoners: they might well have made two or three of the older ones responsible for the conduct of the rest - made them hostages for the good behaviour of the others . . .

  "Guile," Lord Smarden said, trying to prompt Ramage into discussing his ideas. "You can hardly dress up your seamen as women!"

  "No sir," Ramage said as Sir Henry gave his fellow admiral a withering look, "but I might ask for volunteers from among people with grey hair to dress up as old women - long black dresses, and baskets, shawls over the head - to make reconnaissances." He was looking at Smarden's grey hair and Sir Henry said at once: "I'm sure Lord Smarden would be the first to step forward."

  "I appreciate that, sir," Ramage said, keeping a straight face, "and it would take only an hour or so to train him to walk with that shuffle that comes from worn shoes and bunions."

  Lord Smarden looked embarrassed but could not avoid nodding and saying without enthusiasm: "Of course, of course."

  "However," Ramage said, "Lord Smarden is right; it obviously has to be guile. If they're not at Forte della Stella, we go on to the other fort, without raising an alarm. If we have no luck there we must try a few big houses. It could take a couple of days - nights, rather, with our party hiding during the day."

  "What about the ship?" Sir Henry asked.

  "So far the French at both Santo Stefano and Giglio seem quite happy to accept her as French - not surprising, since she is French built - and there's no co-operation between the Navy and the Army."

  "So now we sail for Port' Ercole?" asked Sir Henry.

  "It'll only take a few hours. I want to arrive at night. If we arrive in daylight, the port or garrison commandant probably feels obliged to come out at once to greet us, but if he wakes up in the morning and sees us already at anchor and bustling about our daily business, he's more likely to put off coming out: he usually has to commandeer a local rowing boat which will be covered in fish scales, so he prefers to wait for one of our boats to come on shore . . . And if none comes by noon he'll take his usual siesta, and before he knows it another day has passed, and the ship has been there so long there's no need for a visit."

  Sir Henry nodded his agreement. "I must say you seem to know these people, Ramage. I'd never realized just how much the siesta is an important part of their day until they took me as a hostage. I'd always thought it a waste of time. Now - I suppose it's advancing old age and the heat at noon, but I see its advantages."

  "Indeed, sir, and it's a splendid time to make a reconnaissance before any night operations, whether serenading a sweetheart or looking for hostages."

  "Haven't had much experience of either so far," Sir-Henry admitted ruefully, "but now we seem to be combining both!"

  By noon the wind had backed to the south and was coming up in fitful gusts, with the air beginning to turn sultry. The day had started off with the sky blue and cloudless, and it had stayed like that until after the landing party were back on board with the freed hostages, but then it had slowly, almost imperceptibly, become hazy. Ramage and Southwick, meeting on the quarterdeck, had looked knowingly at each other.

  "It's a scirocco all right, sir," Southwick said and Ramage took a telescope from the binnacle box drawer to look across the strait to the top of Monte Argentario.

  "There they are," he said, "the balls of cotton streaming to leeward of the peak of Argentario." The clouds, the cotton balls, he remembered, were always the outriders of a scirocco, reliable warnings which were useful because the glass usually gave none.

  Southwick gave a disapproving sniff. "We don't want a three-day scirocco blow now," he grumbled. "The seas will fairly pound the cliffs below Forte della Stella. It's the worst wind for Port' Ercole."

  "If it's a regular scirocco, either we'll move round to the north of Giglio and find a lee," Ramage said, "or go over to Argentario and anchor where we were before. That's fairly sheltered."

  He took a chart - a copy of the one in the rack over his desk - from the binnacle drawer and opened it. "Of course, we could use the scirocco to get up to the north and inspect these other islands ... yet I put my faith in Port' Ercole. But if we do go north, we must keep an eye on these." He tapped a finger on three rocks drawn in a line almost midway between Argentario and the headland of Punta Ala. "The Formiche di Grosseto."

  "Odd name," Southwick commented, "and a damned odd place to find a few odd rocks sticking up in the open sea like..." he paused, trying to think of a simile.

  "Like ants," Ramage said. "That's what 'formiche' means. And they're damn' hard to spot on a dark night! Still, this bit of headland points at 'em, even if it is low. It's the mouth of -" he examined the chart closely, "- yes, the river Ombrone. Sandy beach with pine forests behind. And a couple of useful towers. The one on the north side of the river is round and reddish. Hmm, a note here says it is called either 'San Carlo' or 'San Rocca'."

  "Yes, I remember that one," Southwick said, recalling when he had copied the original chart from another owned by a fellow master. "Apparently it was called 'San Carlo' on a captured Italian chart, but it's 'San Rocca' on English ones."

  "Well, it's round and it's red, so it shouldn't be too hard to recognize, and the next one, just as far south of the river as the red one is north, is square and high up, Torre Collelungo. And - your writing, Southwick, is abominable -"

  "Hold hard, sir," protested the master. "That chart's had a few showers of spray over it since I copied it!"

  "- there's a third tower half a mile away, Torre Castel Marino, circular, ruined. Also on a hill - and presumably its guns could once cover the whole beach south of the river."

  Southwick looked over Ramage's shoulder. "More towers along the coast to the south," he said. "Those Spaniards certainly did a great deal of building while they owned this part of Tuscany."

  Ramage ran his finger along the line showing the coast. "Yes, it's beginning to get rocky as you come south towards the Argentario causeways. This promontor
y is high, four hundred feet, with a square tower on top of it, Torre di Cala Forno. And look here to the southeast, two more. Torri dell' Uccellina. Curious that the two of them should be named together. The northern one, your note says, is tall and red, and the other short and grey."

  Ramage put a finger on the Formiche di Grosseto and then squinted at the towers. "Horizontal sextant angles using San Carlo and Collelungo, or either tower and the mouth of the Ombrone river if you could distinguish it, or Collelungo and Cala Forno, or - why, it's a navigator's dream," he said teasingly, "you should be able to find the Formiche as easily as your own nose."

  "I would, if I could see any of those dam' towers, but you can be sure that if the need ever arises it'll be a pitch-dark night with blinding rain - or scirocco haze cutting visibility to less than a mile!"

  Ramage grinned at the old master. "If the idea makes you so nervous," he said, "we'll stay away from the ants!"

  "I should think so," Southwick grunted. "No one in his right mind approaches dangers unnecessarily."

  "Of course not," Ramage agreed, and could not resist adding, "especially with a nervous navigator. Still, the choice doesn't always rest with us."

  Southwick did not rise to the bait. "All good navigators are nervous," he declared. "A confident navigator is usually a fool who knows immediately the name of the shoal he's just hit."

  Ramage nodded his agreement. The Formiche, he saw, were certainly an odd collection of three rocks - they looked like three large pebbles tossed into the sea by a wilful Nature. Three rocks, almost islets, in a straight line stretching north-west and south-east for less than two miles. There was a note written at the bottom of the chart describing them. The northernmost, Formica Maggiore, was the largest and highest rock: whitish-looking from a distance and thirty-two feet high. Near it was a rocky shoal with only - hmm, only nine feet of water over it. A good spot for small fishing boats, no doubt, but shallow enough to tear the bottom out of a frigate. And south of Formica Maggiore yet another shoal stretched out for three hundred yards or so, an invisible trap for the unwary.