Ramage (39 page)

The next gun forward winked and breathed smoke.

A sudden sound like ripping canvas warned him the shot had passed within a few feet, but a hideous metallic clanging and the shrieks of wounded men told him, even before he could glance round, that it had ploughed down the line of guns on the starboard side.

But as Ramage’s eyes were drawn back to the frigate the aftermost gun on her upper deck fired, followed a moment later by the second.

He waited for pain and noise; instead there was a splash in the sea thirty yards astern of the cutter and a vicious whine as the shot, ricocheting off the water, spun away overhead. The second shot must have been too high.

‘One man aiming the upper-deck guns,’ commented Jackson. ‘Don’t know where he sent the last one, though.’

The third of the upper-deck guns fired, followed by the third on the main deck. A heavy thud and splintering wood warned a shot had smashed through the
Kathleen
’s taffrail, but a quick glance at the tiller showed the steering had not been damaged: then he saw the men hauling in the mainsheet had dissolved into a bloody tangle of bodies: the shot had landed in the middle of them.

The
Kathleen
was heading north-eastward and still swinging fast. Ramage waited for the fourth of the lower-deck guns to fire. With a bit of luck the rest still could not be brought to bear.

Southwick was already sending men aloft to clear the wreckage of the topmast and he came over and reported.

‘We can cut the topmast away without difficulty, sir: hasn’t damaged anything else. Three of the starboard side guns dismounted. At a guess, a dozen or so of the lads killed, and maybe a couple of dozen wounded.’

‘Very well: see the wounded are taken below at once.’

A bloody mess – but it could have been a lot worse. What now, though? How the devil was he going to get the men from the Tower on board if he couldn’t use the frigate as a landing stage? All right, all right, he told himself: don’t panic. Itemize, Ramage; itemize carefully.

Hmm… Item: only two guns left out of the five on the
Kathleen
’s starboard side. Very well, if I want to attack again on the starboard side, shift over larboard side guns to take their place. That’ll take time, though, with the ship heeled.

Item: all three of the shots fired by the
Belette
’s lower deck guns hit the
Kathleen
; so if I have a whole broadside fired at me, I can reckon on at least ten hits out of thirteen. Ten hits would leave the
Kathleen
as so much driftwood.

Item: the
Belette
is impregnable so far as the
Kathleen
’s concerned: despite being raked with grapeshot, her aftermost guns had fired, and fired accurately. The guns’ crews might have been killed, but others quickly replaced them.

Item: the – a sudden thought struck him: although the
Belette
’s impregnable
so far as the
cutter is concerned
, what about the
Belette
’s former crew in the Tower? Supposing they made a sally and recaptured her by boarding, using the masts as ladders?

Short of the
Kathleen
boarding, which is impossible because we can’t get alongside without being blown out of the water, that’s the only chance. The more Ramage thought about it, the more convinced he became.

It left two unknown factors: how many French soldiers are there in the
Belette
; how many French soldiers are besieging the Tower?

Ramage reckoned there were at least six score seamen and Marines in the Tower; and he’d have to chance that most of them had muskets or cutlasses. If he organized it properly, the Belettes would have a vital ally – surprise; often the most decisive factor in any battle. A horde of British seamen suddenly yelling and whooping their way out of the Tower and making a bolt for the cliff top might well get them through a French cordon of twice their number. And in the
Belette
herself, the seamen would have all the advantage of fighting in a ship they knew intimately, while the French soldiers would be tripping over everything.

That settled it. Ramage rubbed his forehead: how could he convey the idea to the
Belette
’s captain, marooned in his lofty Tower? There’s no signal in the book to cover it.

Meanwhile the
Kathleen
was still running north-eastward, wasting time. He glanced up and saw the men lowering the last few pieces of the shattered topmast to the deck, and Jackson was walking towards him.

‘All the wounded have been taken below, sir. Ten dead and three won’t last long.’

Thirteen men killed unnecessarily, Ramage thought bitterly.

‘How many wounded altogether?’

‘Fifteen, sir.’

Twenty-five killed and wounded out of a ship’s company of sixty-five: more than a third – nearly a half, in fact. Enough to satisfy anyone who rated a ship’s effectiveness in battle by the size of the butcher’s bill, even if her captain was still ‘on trial’.

Yet he was lucky – Southwick, Appleby, Jackson and Evans had all escaped.

‘Mr Southwick – a moment, if you please.’

The Master came striding over, a cheerful look still on his face: a man who thrived on difficulties, Ramage noted thankfully.

‘How long before I can tack? We’re wasting time standing out to sea like this.’

‘Give me two minutes, sir. I’m just making sure all the halyards are free to run and checking the shrouds and stays.’

‘Very well.’

He said to Jackson: ‘Signal book, please.’

Ramage flicked over the pages, glancing at the numbers of the signals on the left and their meanings on the right.

First, he would hoist ‘Prepare for Battle’. The Belettes will understand that easily enough. They’ll have seen the damage to the cutter and the captain’s no doubt wondering what Ramage was going to do next.

Ah! Ramage jabbed the page with his finger – he should have thought of that: the ‘Preparative’ flag, followed by the signal to board the enemy. The actual wording was ‘To lay the enemy on board as arriving up with them’, but when hoisted with the ‘Preparative’ flag, the
Belette
’s captain would not obey it until the ‘Preparative’ flag was hauled down.

He’d just told Jackson to get the flags bent on the halyards in readiness when Southwick came aft to report that the mainmast was now clear of wreckage.

‘Right,’ snapped Ramage. ‘We’ll go about at once.’

Three minutes later the
Kathleen
had turned and was plunging in towards the shore again, hard on the wind, sluicing spray washing away the dark stains on the deck by the dismounted guns and farther aft, where the men at the mainsheet had been killed.

If the French gunners had used grape or caseshot instead of ordinary round shot… Grape would have done much more damage aloft than just smash the topmast; case shot – forty-two iron balls each weighing four ounces – would have fanned out to kill just about everyone on deck. Ramage shivered.

He’d better give the Belettes as much time as possible to get ready – it would be no easy task giving orders to four score or more seamen crowded into that Tower.

‘Jackson – hoist both the signals, but make sure you’ve got the “Preparative” before the second one.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Ramage watched a red flag followed by a flag quartered in red and white squares soar up the halyard.

To Prepare for Battle
, one of the most exciting signals in the book…

Through his telescope he saw the Tower acknowledge.

Then, on another halyard, Jackson hoisted a flag divided horizontally into five blue and four white stripes: ‘Preparative’.

Finally the American hauled away at a two-flag hoist, the first a blue cross on white, the second horizontal stripes of blue, white and red – ‘To lay the enemy on board…’

Once again the Tower acknowledged.

Everything depends on the timing…everything depends on the timing… Well, not everything: if the men in the Tower failed to carry the
Belette
by boarding, no timing in the world would save the
Kathleen
from being blown out of the water because he wouldn’t know of their failure early enough to get clear.

Looking round the deck, Ramage saw the rolls of hammocks in boarding nets which he had ordered the Bosun’s Mate to prepare for when the
Kathleen
went alongside – before he knew the French were in occupation. It’d be worth getting them rigged over the side. And the hands for grapnels – had any been killed? He walked over to Southwick and gave him the necessary instructions.

Perhaps the wind was easing off after all: earlier he had noticed momentary pauses, as if the
Libeccio
was occasionally holding its breath. He had often seen half a dozen pauses like that herald the change in ten minutes from a strong wind to nothing, leaving a ship becalmed and wallowing in a nasty sea, with everything aloft thumping and slatting and everything below jumping up and down as if it had St Vitus’ dance. Supposing he was becalmed a hundred yards short of the
Belette
, after the seamen had left the Tower…?

Ramage swayed in time to the cutter’s rhythmic roll: the
Belette
was a mile ahead and he was steering the same course as before. The ‘Prepare for Battle’ and ‘Board’ signals were flying, the latter qualified by the all-important ‘Preparative’. The main and jib sheets were eased so that both sails were spilling a lot of wind, reducing the cutter’s speed to about five knots. They’d be alongside the
Belette
in about twelve minutes.

Ramage walked over to the quartermaster, who was standing on the weather side of the tiller, with a seaman to leeward.

‘You understand your orders?’

The quartermaster grinned confidently.

‘Yes, sir: same as before, only this time I luff her up and lay alongside the
Belette
, so our transom is level with theirs.’

‘Good: do your best: mind the bowsprit – we don’t want to harpoon the
Belette
with it.’

Both the quartermaster and seaman laughed.

Ramage was thankful he’d hove-to and shifted over the larboard-side carronades to replace the damaged ones to starboard: it had been hard work, but worth it. He walked over to the crew of the aftermost gun. Their cutlasses and boarding pikes were stuck into the bulwark on each side of the port, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. The gun was loaded, and the tompion closed the muzzle against spray. A gaudy yellow and red striped rag – judging from the grease one of the men had been wearing it round his forehead – covered the flintlock, and the trigger line was laid on top. To one side of the gun was a grapnel, its line coiled down. The once-smooth planking of the deck was deeply scored where the shot from the
Belette
had flung aside the carronade that this one replaced.

‘Who’s the man for the grapnel?’

A burly seaman in grimy canvas trousers and faded blue shirt stepped forward.

‘Me, sir.’

‘And you know where I want that grapnel to land?’

‘If we get alongside like you said, sir, then I pop ’im over the bulwarks just above the second gun port from aft.’

‘And if we stop short?’

‘Over the taffrail, sir.’

‘Fine. Don’t forget to let it go when you throw: I don’t want you to fly across to the
Belette
.’

The rest of the gun’s crew laughed and a moment later the seaman, who had not at first understood Ramage’s joke, joined in.

Ramage walked forward, having a word with the crew of each gun. He checked how the sausage-shaped fenders had been lashed over the side and made sure they were clear of the muzzles of the guns.

Standing by himself near the stemhead, Ramage found a small, thin and almost bald seaman waiting patiently with a grapnel and coil of line at his feet.

He seemed hardly the right man to heave a grapnel, yet the Bosun’s Mate had chosen him to be in the most important and difficult position of all – at the end of the bowsprit, clear of the jib.

Ramage asked him: ‘How far can you throw that?’

‘Dunno, really, sir.’

‘Forty feet?’

‘Dunno, sir: but a deal farther than anyone else on board.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Last cap’n had a sort of competition, sir. Got meself an extra tot.’

‘Good,’ Ramage smiled. ‘Heave like that again and you’ll get a couple of extra tots!’

‘Oh, thank’ee, sir, thank’ee: John Smith the Third sir, able seaman. You won’t forget, sir?’

The man’s eyes were pleading. For all he knew, in – well, about eight minutes’ time – he would be out on his lonely perch facing a murderous fire from the French, and the prospect left him unworried. But the chance of an extra couple of tots of rum – that made his eyes sparkle and brought with it a sudden anxious fear, that the captain might forget.