by Dudley Pope
Southwick and Aitken glanced at each other at his last words, but Ramage decided against explaining his plan. The ship's company was in good spirits because it was confident. Now the men had to develop another kind of confidence - that they could deal with anything unexpected while in the boats. Most important of all, how to scramble up a ship's side while armed with a pistol, musket, cutlass or pike, and with a determined enemy firing down at them. There would be no shooting while they exercised boarding the Juno in the darkness, but it would teach them that the side of a prison wall and the side of a frigate could be just as difficult to scale.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Next morning the Surgeon reported to Ramage shortly after dawn, holding a list in one hand and his journal in the other. Bowen had a long face and said mournfully, 'It's been a long time since I had to report men on the sick list, sir . . .'
'You'd better start getting used to the idea,' Ramage said grimly. 'We'll be seeing plenty of action in the next few weeks, I hope. Now, what sort of harvest did you reap last night?'
Bowen held out the list. ‘The men are so careless,' he grumbled. 'They don't seem to give a thought to their own safety.'
'This list certainly bears that out,' Ramage said crossly, and Bowen looked up, startled. 'Four men wounded by the accidental discharge of pistols, one by a musket ball, one cut by a cutlass - how the devil can that happen? - and three with rope burns to the hands and shins.'
'Accidents will happen, sir,' Bowen said lamely.
'Accidents? Five shots fired. Can you imagine that happening as boats row up with muffled oars to make a surprise night attack on an enemy ship at anchor? Even one shot would give the alarm. The enemy is alerted and opens fire, and every man in our boarding party might be killed. Twenty men die - many more if there are other boats - all because of the stupid, criminal carelessness of one man.'
He looked down at the list and said wrathfully: That can happen if one man is careless, but just look at this.' He waved the paper. 'Not one man but five. And in every case the man shoots himself or another of his shipmates. Well, I'm warning the ship's company that the next time I'll have each man flogged -'
'Fortunately, sir, all the wounds are slight. I have -'
'Bowen,' Ramage snapped, 'frankly I don't give a damn about the wounds. What concerns me is the noise. A pistol shot at night can be heard for a couple of miles, let alone a couple of yards. Can't you understand that one man's carelessness can kill all his shipmates, and wreck a carefully planned attack?'
'Yes, sir, I do understand about the gunshot wounds, but the rope burns -'
'Rope burns!' Ramage exclaimed. 'Damnation take it, Bowen, these men are supposed to be seamen. Do I have to start training them to climb ropes?'
'Excuse me, sir,' Bowen said nervously, not having seen Ramage so angry before, 1 did question those three men because it surprised me too, and it was due to enthusiasm. All three were climbing the same rope to board the Juno, and apparently the lower two men were urging on the man above them. In his excitement he missed his grasp with one hand, began to slide and took the rest of the men down with him.'
'Very well,' Ramage said, a little mollified. 'But this fellow with the cutlass wound?'
'Didn't Orsini report that incident to you, sir?' Bowen asked cautiously. 'What incident?'
‘Oh dear, sir, I seem to be getting into deep water. I don't want to get Orsini into trouble ...'
'Out with it,' Ramage ordered, 'otherwise I'll send for Orsini. I'll have to anyway, if it is something he should have reported.'
'Well, sir, apparently the boarders from the cutter came over the starboard side of the fo'c'sle and those from the launch over the larboard side. Both parties began boarding at the same time, and when they met on the fo'c'sle one man from each party began quarrelling about who was first on board. I'm sorry to say they came to blows.'
'With cutlasses?' Ramage asked incredulously.
Bowen nodded. 'One of them was cut and they only stopped slashing at each other when Orsini jumped between them. It was a very brave act on the part of the boy,' he added.
'Very foolish if you ask me. Were the men drunk?'
'No, just excited. You see, sir, they're so proud of the ship now that they're all trying to outdo each other and be first at everything. I'm surprised –‘
When the Surgeon broke off, Ramage said, 'Well, go on, man!'
'I was going to say, if you'll excuse the boldness, sir, that I was surprised you had not noticed it. All the lieutenants have been commenting on it for some time, and Southwick is most gratified ...'
'Proud, are they?' Ramage exclaimed. 'Well, after that farce last night they ought to be thoroughly ashamed. I assure you, Bowen, that I am heartily ashamed that I command a ship which is incapable of sending off boarding parties that don't spend their time shooting at each other.'
He gave the list back to Bowen. 'It's your job to treat these men, Bowen, but have you ever thought what a captain feels? I'm trying to train them so they stand the best possible chance of carrying out any orders I give them without unnecessary casualties. If I send out boarding parties made up of untrained men to attack a French ship and the boats return three-quarters full of dead and dying men, you'd be justified in blaming me. I'm trying to make sure it never happens; that every man realizes that a mistake, however slight, can get everyone killed.'
Bowen nodded and folded the list. 'I understand, sir,' he said quietly. 'If you'll just sign the entry in my journals . . . I'll have these men back on their feet as soon as possible.'
Ramage went to the desk and took out pen and ink from the rack. He glanced down the names and was thankful to note that none of them was a former Triton. Under the 'Disease and symptoms' column he saw that the gunshot wounds were comparatively slight. The cutlass wound was a gash on the forearm. He scribbled his signature and gave the journal back to the Surgeon.
Bowen hesitated for a moment and then said cautiously: 'Orsini's failure to report the episode, sir ...'
Ramage raised his eyebrows. 'Orsini?'
The Surgeon grinned. 'Thank you, sir. He's a lad with plenty of spirit - I sometimes wish the Marchesa could see him now.'
An hour after sunrise the Juno tacked off Pointe des Salines at the south end of Martinique and steered northwards along the coast, keeping as close in to the shore as Southwick's sketchy charts allowed. Jackson was aloft at the foretopmasthead with strict orders to watch for any signs of shoals, and the Master had the chart spread out on the binnacle box, held down by weights and his quadrant.
The Juno's guns were loaded and run out, the lieutenants stood by on the maindeck, watching their own divisions, and Ramage stood aft beside the quartermaster, a speaking trumpet on the deck beside him and a telescope in his hand.
The land here was flat but rising slightly towards Pointe Dunkerque. That was a good place for a battery, to cover one side of the deep but narrow bay forming the anchorage of St Anne, with the village of Bourg du Marin at its head. It was a fine little anchorage for droghers carrying sugar cane from plantations at the south end of the island up to Fort Royal and St Pierre - and an equally good place for privateers to lurk, ready to snatch up a British merchantman making its way up or down the coast, while safe from any British frigate which would not risk the shoals almost closing the entrance. Yet, Ramage remembered, the Welcome brig had been close in under Pointe Dunkerque, and had not been fired on. Perhaps the French were short of guns, too, using those they had for the defence of Fort Royal and perhaps St Pierre, which had no harbour.
The Pointe soon drew round on to the Juno's quarter as Ramage took her over towards the headland on the northern side of the entrance. He now saw it would make more sense to place a battery on that side because any vessel beating into the bay, which ran north-east, would have to pass within a hundred yards of it to avoid shoals on the other side.
He lifted the speaking trumpet and shouted the order that would brace the yards and trim the sheets as he gave the quartermast
er instructions to steer a point more to starboard. Through the telescope he examined the headland, nearly a mile distant. There was a hint of a pathway leading up to an old stone wall partly overgrown with bushes. Then he noticed that the bushes round the wall were withered; the leaves were brown while those shrubs nearby were a living green. Was that some movement beyond the wall? It was hard to tell at this range.
Suddenly two red eyes seemed to wink in the wall and a moment later two spurts of smoke changed into a billowing puff drifting away in the wind. 'Just west of the top of the point,' he shouted at Aitken and glanced round to look for the fall of shot. Two thin columns of water leapt up into the air a hundred yards short of the Juno and well ahead.
There was little chance of doing the battery much damage, and opening ineffective fire would show the French gunners that they were safe from a frigate's guns. It might be a better idea to let them continue to think so, but it was an equally good idea to let the Juno's men fire their first shots in anger.
'Mr Aitken - a single round to try the range!'
The Juno's 12-pounders could reach the battery, but the frigate was rolling just enough to make aiming difficult for the gun captains.
The aftermost 12-pounder - the one in his cabin - grunted and rumbled back in recoil. More marks on the painted canvas from those damned trucks. A moment before smoke swirled up from the port Ramage saw several spurts of dust just below the battery as the shot hit twenty yards below the wall and ricocheted up the slope. He managed to stop himself calling down to Aitken: the First Lieutenant knew what to do, and even now men with handspikes would be lifting the breech of the next gun and sliding out the wedge-shaped quoin a fraction to increase the gun's elevation.
'One more round to be sure,' Ramage shouted and the gun fired almost immediately. Through his telescope Ramage saw stones thrown outwards at the same level as the battery but apparently just to the right of it. Then he saw that it had in fact hit the wall.
'That's better,' he shouted, making sure all the men at the starboard side guns heard him. 'Now, every gun to fire as it bears - gun captains take their time and don't waste shot!'
Southwick, completely unconcerned with the thunder and smoke of the Juno's guns, was crouched over the compass, taking bearings of the tip of the Point and the battery. He straightened up and went to the chart on the binnacle box as the next gun fired. Within half a minute each of the Juno's starboard side guns had fired and was being reloaded. Smoke, acrid and biting the throat and nose, drifted back over the quarterdeck before being swept away to leeward.
Much of the wall had been demolished; through the glass Ramage caught sight of men in blue jackets scurrying about. Again a red eye winked and there was a spurt of smoke. He did not bother to look for the fall of shot - gunners who had just heard or felt thirteen 12-pounder round shot crashing about them would not be aiming with much skill. Only one shot. The other gun had not fired. Had a lucky shot dismounted it?
Even as he tried to catch sight of the actual guns, those on board the Juno began firing again; firing carefully, every gun captain sure of his aim before tugging the lanyard, as far as the Juno's captain was concerned. Another section of the stone wall collapsed, leaving only a pyramid standing in the middle; then more rocks began rolling from that, and he glimpsed a large black tube pointing up in the air, and beside it another such tube lying at an angle, like a log that had fallen from a cart.
'Secure the guns!' he called down to Aitken, 'Good shooting - you've dismounted both of them.'
Immediately the gun crews began cheering and the lieutenants bellowed for silence. Ramage's eyes narrowed. The men were children to be cheering at what was little more than an exercise. He turned to the quartermaster, ordered him to bear away, and gestured to Southwick to give the order for trimming the yards.
Then he went to the quarterdeck rail and looked down at the men at the guns. Some were stripped to the waist, all had narrow bands of cloth tied round their foreheads to stop perspiration running into their eyes. They were grinning and gesturing to each other.
'Listen you men,' Ramage roared. 'With twenty-six rounds of shot, two full broadsides, you've managed to knock down a dry stone wall and dismount two small guns behind it, and you cheer! The battery is low down and easy to see, thanks to those Frenchmen forgetting to cut fresh shrubs to hide the front of the wall. But you'll all learn about firing at batteries when you have to tackle one on top of a cliff and firing down at you. One where every gun is aimed coolly because they know there's precious little chance of your shot reaching them. Now, get those guns sponged out, and let's have no more of this childishness!'
He marched back aft to join Southwick, his anger already evaporating. He was glad in a way that the men were pleased with their shooting, but he wanted them to be under no illusion about what the plunging fire of a well-placed and well-manned battery on the top of a cliff could do to a ship of war. The two guns they had just dismounted were probably firing at a ship for the first time.
Southwick was carefully pencilling in the battery's position on the chart and as Ramage bent over to see that a road below the battery went round the back of the hill, to the village of Bourg du Marin, the Master whispered: 'Nevertheless, it was good shooting, sir!’
'I'm not denying that,' Ramage muttered, 'I just don't want them to think that the fire from Fort St Louis will be like that.'
'Ah,' Southwick said and then, with a sideways glance, added: 'It mightn't be so bad in the dark.'
'Quite,' Ramage said coldly. The Master might feel he ought not to have been so harsh with the men, but too much praise was as bad as too little; over-confidence could kill them just as easily as a lack of it. Striking the right balance, that was the Captain's job, and he was finding it hard. A naval officer in wartime had to order men into battle, but it did not follow that he had to shrug his shoulders when they were killed. It was deuced hard work trying to train them so that they had the best chance of surviving, and that was what he had been trying to tell Bowen earlier. A childhood memory came back to him - his father about to give him a beating for some escapade which had ended up with his horse bolting, and saying with genuine sadness: ‘It's for your own good, boy.'
Southwick was saying something and gesturing at the chart, indicating another headland five miles along the coast to the westward and a mile short of the long stretch of Diamond beach. Realizing that Ramage had been preoccupied, he repeated: 'I think that's where we'll find the next one, sir: Grosse Pointe. There'll be nothing along the beach here, the land's too low. Then another one somewhere here, on the headland in front of Diamond Hill. I see they call it "Morne du Diamant".' He peered closely at the chart. 'Sixteen hundred feet high. This ridge here must be about five hundred feet. That's where I'd put one if it was up to me.'
'The gunners wouldn't thank you,' Ramage said, pointing to the nearest road, which ran along the back of the Diamond beach and stopped at the bottom of Morne du Diamant, a mile or more short of the peak. 'Imagine carrying powder and shot all that way.'
‘They'd use donkeys and slaves,' Southwick said. 'I can't see French artillerymen exerting themselves.'
'Those fellows back there stood their ground well enough,' Ramage reminded him.
'They didn't know what was coming,' Southwick said contemptuously. 'Otherwise they'd have bolted when that second shot caught the wall and ricocheted past their ears.'
By noon the Juno had passed Cap Salomon and sheets and braces were being hauled as the helm was put up for the frigate to begin beating into Fort Royal Bay. Southwick had been right, there had been a battery at Grosse Pointe and two guns had fired, but Ramage had not fired back. Dismounted guns could be remounted on new carriages; the Grosse Pointe battery and the one that had fired a single gun from a third of the way up Diamond Hill would have to be destroyed completely. As a result they had been left alone, and Southwick had marked their precise positions on the chart and made neat sketches in the log. The fourth battery had predictably been sited at
Cap Salomon: four guns which had fired a dozen shots each as the Juno sailed slowly by a mile off, well within range. Not one of the shots landed within two or three cables of the frigate, and the battery was so high there was little danger from ricochets skimming low over the sea.
The frigate had no sooner rounded Cap Salomon than the city of Fort Royal came in sight as the great bay opened up. Built on the northern side, it was only just inside it. The higher buildings showed up white and red in the telescope but with the mouth of the bay nearly four miles wide it was still impossible to make out much detail.
The ship's company had had dinner and were in good spirits; Aitken reported wryly that he had heard much among the men about how they could have knocked out the other batteries, and that the Captain was probably leaving them for the time being, intending to tackle one a week to keep the guns' crews in practice.
Ramage smiled and glanced at the dogvanes from time to time. The wind was light and from the east, but they were still in the lee of the mountains behind Cap Salomon. Once they came clear of the headland - and the north-going current was giving them a good lift - there should be a good wind all the way up to Fort Royal because the land on the eastern side of the bay was low.
Ramage felt the excitement growing on board the frigate: the men were still at quarters and Jackson, Rossi, Stafford and several other former Tritons were conspicuous for their nonchalance. They had been in action too many times to be impressed by the distant sight of a French port. Young Orsini and Benson were wearing their dirks with all the flourish of fencing masters, eager as ferrets to catch his eye in case there was a message to carry or an errand to perform.
'Mr Aitken, I think we can be sure the Governor of Fort Royal has a list of the Navy so we might as well introduce ourselves. Have our pendant numbers hoisted.'
The First Lieutenant snapped the order to the two midshipmen, who ran to the flag locker, and the men watched the three flags being hoisted. Hearing a curious murmuring, Ramage walked to the quarterdeck rail to look down on the maindeck. The men were grinning and clapping each other on the back, obviously delighted that the flags streaming in the wind were advertising their presence in an enemy port.