Ramage & the Saracens
Page 18
And there was, of course, the 110-gun Ville de Paris, built in England. Would it be possible that the French would build a four-decker and name it City of London? The British, he decided, were either very special or very stupid, and he was not at all sure which it was.
Orsini came up and reported his sleeping quarters were ready. They’d swept out a small room—presumably used as a magazine—on the top of the battlements and, after making sure there were no scorpions lurking around in the semi-darkness, they had put down a mattress. Its great advantage was that a cry from one of the sentries brought him on the spot within seconds.
And now it was dark. The single small fishing boat had come back in, to be welcomed by a group of women on the quay, a sure sign of their need for fish.
He was startled to hear one of the sentries challenging someone who had come up the track from the town, and pleased to find it was the mayor and a boy carrying pots of food.
“Supper for you and your men,” the mayor explained. “We thought you would have difficulty in getting a fire going up here, so my wife cooked some extra pasta. And there is bread, and water. No wine, as you said.”
Ramage ate his supper with Orsini and after an hour walking right round the battlements went to bed, more tired than he ever was at sea: the effect, he thought drowsily, of all the walking.
He woke up next morning when the mayor and boy—he was the mayor’s youngest son—brought them breakfast, a simple meal of which the main course was a chunk of heavy bread. Then Ramage set off down the hill to find Rennick and inspect the men: it would do no harm for them to know that he was keeping an eye on them.
The rest of the fourth day passed without incident. The guns’ crews exercised at the carronades and the seamen practised charging the quay, watched by wide-eyed children and curious adults. The mayor, who was looking on with Ramage, was most impressed, except that he thought that the Saraceni would probably outnumber the seamen and marines.
Ramage explained about the carronades, pointing out that the seamen and marines would not appear on the scene until after the guns had done their best to clear the quay.
The Calypso returned on the late afternoon of the fifth day and turned away when she did not see any flag hoisted. Ramage could imagine the disappointment felt by Aitken and Southwick. Impatience rather than disappointment: they would want to get the attack over with, so that they would have no more worry. Neither of them was contented with being left out of the fight; it was in the nature of both men that they could not admit that everything would go off all right without them being present. Ramage pictured Southwick bellowing his way down the quay, whirling his great two-handed sword like a scythe cutting down wheat.
Two more days: Ramage was sure that the attack would come then, which gave the Saracens enough time to get to their bases and then back again to Licata. There was no reason to expect the enemy to be punctual: Ramage was basing his calculations on the natural urge of the Saracens to finish their raids and settle down to some peaceful feasting.
Two more days: by then the Calypsos would have been on shore a week. They would have practised handling the carronades and charging the quay enough times that they would know exactly what to do, whether in daylight or darkness. They would have that advantage over the Saracens—they would know the ground while the Saracens would be strangers. Ramage knew it was not much of an advantage because Licata was such a small town. But in the coming fight the advantage would be with the side that could add up a series of small advantages.
By the sixth day in Licata, Ramage was beginning to feel the start of boredom: walking up and down the battlements and inspecting the men down in the town had its limitations. Up on the battlements he had counted the flagstones innumerable times; he had walked across them stepping on every join; he had walked their length careful to never step on a join. He had counted the lizards looking up at him with beady eyes and had in exasperation chased two or three of them, until one of them dropped his tail and Ramage tired of the sport.
When he was at sea he sometimes longed for a few days on shore, looking forward to the green leaves, the song of the birds, the lack of rolling and pitching. But Licata was not green, it was parched brown by the sun so that even the lizards were brown, not a lively green, and there were few birds: most had been shot to eat, especially the songbirds, which were so tame. And the damned dust: he forgot about the dust when he was at sea, but here in Licata there was plenty and every whiffle of wind sent up a funnel of it, so that it got in the eyes, the throat and the food. It was bad enough up in the castle: it must be far worse for the men down in the town. But they did not complain; for them the joy of being on shore for a change outweighed any drawbacks like dust.
Once again a fishing boat went out and tacked up and down in front of the port, and Ramage amused himself by trying to guess the range, but it was a game without a solution because he had no way of checking: his sextant and tables were still on board the Calypso. The fishing boat gave a curious air of normality to the port; as though the quay, houses, church and castle were not complete without a sail to seaward.
Ramage did not sleep well on the sixth night: he did not seem to be tired and it was hot and sultry. He twisted and turned on his mattress, and a dozen times got up and went outside to chat with the sentries and, several times, with Paolo Orsini. The moon was nearly full and the town seemed covered in menacing shadows. But the quay was lit up clearly; the stone gleamed white in the moonlight. Running figures, the Saracens, would show up well. If and when they arrived.
When the mayor and his boy brought up breakfast next morning Ramage felt jaded. They had been just a week in Licata and it seemed like a month; the guns’ crews were now well trained at the carronades; the seamen and marines were now used to practising with their muskets and then running down the quay screaming warlike whoops and threats.
“Well,” said the mayor, as he had done for the past few mornings, “do you think they will come today?”
Ramage shrugged. “Who knows? Today, tomorrow, the day after … but, signor, we are ready for them. The extra days have been useful. The donkeys have been shut out of their stables, but what we have in the stables in their place will be more useful!”
“That is very true, and the donkeys will come to no harm. Your guns will alarm them when they go off: the banging and the braying will make a noise such as we have never heard.”
“How true,” Ramage agreed, thinking too of the screams of the Saracens and the seamen, apart from the rattle of musketry, Licata would have a tale to tell that would be handed down for generations, growing in the telling.
When he had finished his breakfast Ramage went for yet another walk along the battlements, glad of the exercise. The lookouts, one at each end of the battlements, watched seaward. It was another pleasant day with a good breeze from the south blowing in through the port entrance and puffballs of cloud skimming inland towards the mountains.
Ramage was now definitely bored; he longed for his cabin on Calypso and the walk on the quarterdeck. He would settle, he decided, for a good horse and a vigorous ride inland to the foothills of the mountains, which were greyish blue and fresh looking.
He gestured to Orsini to join him as they walked. “Is this your first visit to Sicily?”
“Yes, sir, and I think I’ve had enough of Licata!”
“It doesn’t buzz with activity,” Ramage admitted. “Still, we have a castle to ourselves. In most of the other ports we’d be sharing stables with donkeys.”
Orsini rubbed his wrists ruefully. “I think donkeys would be preferable to these damned mosquitoes. At dawn and dusk they just make straight for my wrists. Look at them!”
His wrists were badly swollen and covered with the weals of bites. “They seem to affect you more than me,” Ramage said sympathetically. “In fact—”
At that moment one of the lookouts shouted and Ramage saw he was pointing seaward, to the west. And there, black specks on the horizon, were several vessels.
“Church bells, sir?” asked Orsini, but Ramage shook his head.
“We have plenty of time so let’s wait until we are sure who they are.”
He collected his telescope from his little room in the magazine and pulled out the tube, adjusting it to the inscribed line. He started counting. Six … eight … eleven … and two more were just coming into sight.
“They’re the Saracens all right,” he said to Orsini, “but we’ll wait with the bells. The town only needs half an hour’s warning, and it is going to take those boats another fifteen minutes to get close enough for us to be sure of them.”
“It’s a relief seeing them at last,” Orsini said. “It was worse just waiting.”
“It always is,” Ramage commented. “Anyway, they’ve come on time.”
Ramage watched with his telescope and finally counted fifteen vessels, and by then the hulls were lifting over the horizon. Half the boats were tartanes, easily identifiable from their sails, three were larger galleys with sails and oars, and the rest were Italian fishing boats, obviously the craft stolen from the ports in the previous raids.
“Fifteen of them. Say thirty men in each boat. I don’t think there will be more because they would leave plenty of room for prisoners. That makes four hundred and fifty men altogether. On paper they outnumber us more than two to one.” Ramage was thinking aloud rather than talking to anyone and Orsini kept quiet, watching the approaching vessels with his telescope.
Finally, as the fishing boat obviously sighted the oncoming Saracens and hurriedly turned back to port, Ramage told Orsini: “Send off your men to ring the bells.”
Two of the lookouts ran off down the hills and five minutes later the bells began to toll, a lugubrious sound that reminded Ramage of funerals and incense and weeping women and shuffling men in their best suits.
Finally the bells stopped and by then the fishing boat was nearly back in the port, its crew ready to run for home and load fowling pieces, if they owned them.
By now Orsini was inspecting the rockets and blowing on the slowmatch. The long wait, Ramage thought, had cost them a lot of slowmatch—almost as much as there had been in the Calypso—but at least they were not now struggling with flint and steel and tinder box.
The sails of the Saracen boats had more patches than original cloth, but they were driving the boats well as they stretched along in a fine reaching wind.
Ramage swung his telescope down over the town. There was not a soul on the quay. Nor could he see anyone moving in the town. The people had taken the mayor’s orders to heart: he had told them that as soon as they heard the church bells they were to go to their homes and, if possible, bar the doors. Many of the houses did not have proper doors: curtains of sacking hung down. This was a poor place and anyway there was little wood about, the only trees being shrubs which were burned for charcoal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DOWN in his stable, Jackson walked round the carronade like an anxious hen circling its chicks. “I hope we’ll hear the rocket,” he said. “Here, Rosey, you station yourself by the door. But make sure you jump back quick when you hear the rocket because I shall fire at once. Almost at once, anyway.”
“You be patient,” said the practical Rossi, moving to the door. “If I am to be sure of hearing the rocket I’ll be standing only a foot from the muzzle.”
“All right, all right,” Jackson said and turned to Stafford. “To save our Italian friend from being blown to pieces accidentally, don’t you cock the lock until the rocket’s gone off. Does that satisfy you Rosey?”
The Italian nodded grudgingly.
Stafford was busy preparing the gun. First he took the long, thin pricker and thrust it down the vent, jabbing it in and out until he was sure it had pierced the cartridge. Then he pushed a quill down the vent and then sprinkled some priming powder from the horn round his neck, so that it filled the pan and covered the top of the quill. The moment that Jackson pulled his firing lanyard and the lock was triggered to make a spark, the powder would fire the quill and a spurt of flame would flash down the vent and detonate the cartridge. But until the lock was cocked, there was no way that the flintlock could cause a spark.
His job as second captain completed, except for cocking the lock, Stafford stood back. Jackson crouched down and sighted along the barrel, although he knew the gun was already trained on the right section of the quay.
“I wonder how many there are,” said Stafford.
“I heard Mr Ramage say he reckoned they’d have about twenty boats,” Jackson said. “Tell me how many men the boats carry and I’ll tell you how many men they have.”
“They’ll be galleys and tartanes and maybe a few fishing boats. Thirty or forty men in each boat?”
“I doubt if they’d have as many as that,” Jackson said. “They need room for prisoners.”
“Even if they have only twenty in each boat, they’ll outnumber us two to one.”
“But they won’t have six carronades, half a dozen boat-guns and a couple of hundred muskets and pistols,” Jackson pointed out. “Cheer up, Staff, you probably won’t end up your days in a Saracen galley!”
Stafford shuddered. “I should hope not. I can feel that whip across my shoulders, and my hands are raw from holding the oar.”
“It’s your imagination that makes you tired,” Jackson said unsympathetically. “You just keep this gun firing and we’ll all be all right.”
“We’ll certainly surprise ‘em,” Stafford said, seeking some consolation in the fact. “There they come dancing ashore thinking they’re attacking a helpless fishing port, and bang, bang, there are the Calypsos waiting for them.”
“I suspect that’s why we’re here,” Jackson said sarcastically. “I can’t help thinking that that’s what crossed Mr Ramage’s mind when he first stepped ashore here.”
“I ‘spect so,” Stafford said in the tone of voice that took it for granted that the captain worked miracles. “He’s usually got a reason.”
“I don’t understand when we know to stop firing so that the seamen and marines attack along the quay,” Gilbert said.
“You weren’t listening properly when Mr Ramage was giving us our orders,” Jackson said. “There’ll be a rocket—maybe more than one—telling us when to open fire, and three rockets when we’re to cease fire and the seamen and marines to go chasing up the quay.”
“Supposing we don’t hear the rockets?” Gilbert persisted.
“We’d better, otherwise we’re going to kill a lot of our own men as they run out,” Jackson said. “Anyway, we’ll either see the rockets as they burst, or we’ll hear the other guns stop firing. Or not hear them, rather.”
“It’s not a very good idea,” Gilbert said. “Rockets don’t make such a noise.”
“As Mr Ramage said,” Jackson growled, “there’s no other way: men won’t have time to run from gun to gun saying ‘Please stop firing.’ Anyway, rockets make a completely different noise from carronades or muskets. You listen hard, Gilbert—and the rest of you. Staff and Rosey and I will have enough to concentrate on.”
“Rockets!” Gilbert said crossly. “Might as well have someone up at the castle blowing a whistle!”
Jackson stared at the Frenchman. “Say a prayer that we stay alive to hear the rockets. If those Saracens get near us with their scimitars, it will be all over!”
“They’ll have to run fast to catch me,” Gilbert said drily.
Up in the castle Ramage watched the oncoming Saracen boats. It was impossible to see how many men they carried but the telescope revealed one thing: the decks were not lined with men. The Saracens, Ramage concluded, were sure that all they were doing was attacking yet another undefended small fishing port; as far as they were concerned this was a repeat of Marsala, Maz
ara, Sciacca, and Empedocle: a routine attack, nothing to get excited about.
“Light another slowmatch,” he told Orsini. “I don’t like having to rely on one. In fact light two more: let’s have one each when we want to fire off three rockets. The men are more likely to hear three rockets fired almost simultaneously.”
“We have about seven feet of slowmatch left, sir,” Orsini reported.
“That’s enough for another three Saracen raids,” Ramage said impatiently.
The glare from the sea was strong now as the stiff breeze pewtered the water, throwing up small waves which reflected the sun like a million flashing diamonds. The Saracen craft were approaching like water beetles advancing across a pond. With this south wind, Ramage noted, the Saracens would be able to run into the port with a commanding wind, rounding up alongside the quay. It would be a head wind for them leaving—but, unless his plans went badly adrift, none of them would be doing that.
Five hundred yards? About that, then the first of the craft, a tartane, would be coming in through the entrance. Then a second and third tartane and then three galleys. They were gaudily painted. The tartanes were decked out in strakes of green and red, with blue and white triangles and stripes apparently painted on the hulls at random. The galleys were similarly painted but as Ramage swung his telescope further round he could see that the fishing boats were still painted in the Sicilian fashion, each with a big eye painted on either side of the bow.