Ramage's Challenge (32 page)

The young Italian was standing at a gun port, peering out and trying to glimpse the frigate astern while the gun captains chatted and most of the crews sat on the deck, backs against the carriages. Some seemed to be asleep, despite the spray, the creaking of the ropes of the tackles, and the grumbling of the trucks as the guns moved an inch or so with each roll of the ship.

Orsini listened attentively as Ramage gave him his orders, ending with, “Any questions?”

“Not about the orders, sir. Are we leaving Tuscany for good?” Ramage shrugged. “It depends, but I doubt it.”

He understood immediately that it was no idle question, knowing Orsini's deep love for Tuscany, which he shared. Most British seamen seeing the Lizard fading in the distance as they started off on a voyage from England wondered whether they would ever see their home again. Paolo must be wondering if that fleeting glimpse of breakers in the darkness would be the last time he saw Tuscany. The last time, or anyway, the last time for many years.

“It depends on whether our trick works,” Ramage said, “if ‘trick' is the right word.”

After joking with the guns' crews, Ramage went back to the quarterdeck to find that Aitken, in anticipation of his return, was waiting for the seamen with the logline to report the
Calypso
's speed. While he waited Ramage looked, yet again, at his watch in the light from the binnacle. Fourteen minutes to go, and damnation, he had forgotten to have a word with the lookouts. Still, perhaps that was all to the good: in a few moments he would send round a couple of seamen to warn the lookouts that in ten minutes or so they should see …
should,
but with the darkness and haze
would
they … ?

R
AMAGE slipped the watch back into his fob. “Send ‘em off,” he said, and Aitken snapped an order to two seamen, who hurried down the ladders to warn the lookouts amidships and forward. Aitken called over to the lookouts on each quarter, and Ramage saw the admiral stir as he heard the words above the howling wind.

There was no question now of being suspected of seeking Sir Henry's approval and, Ramage thought, not telling the old man at this stage might seem unnecessarily discourteous. He walked aft and Sir Henry slid off the breech of the carronade.

“Expecting some action, eh?”

“I don't know what to expect, sir,” Ramage said frankly. “I'm not sympathetic towards gamblers, because usually a bit of thought lessens the odds considerably, but this time—well, I've got to stake everything on one throw of the dice.”

“No second throw, then?”

Ramage shook his head, conscious of the minutes ticking away and listening: when the first shout came everything would happen with bewildering speed. “No, sir, we have to win the first time, or else we'll be done for. I'm sorry I've got you all into this situation.”

“Not your fault,” Sir Henry said gruffly. “Just bad luck that this damned frigate—” he gestured astern at the dim shape in the wake, “should have arrived when she did.”

“So I'm intending to do this,” Ramage said, quickly explaining his plan. At the end of it Sir Henry turned slightly so that he could look straight into Ramage's face.

“You are quite mad, of course,” he said quietly. “It is surely the craziest thing I've ever heard, and there's a good chance we'll all drown in the next few minutes.”

Just as well I did not ask for his permission, Ramage thought to himself. Coming from Sir Henry, such a judgement was not very heartening—to say the least.

“No,” Sir Henry said, drawing out the words as though he had carefully searched his memory for them, “I've never heard of anything quite so crazy.” He slapped his thigh, and for a moment Ramage thought the admiral was going to give him direct orders, saying he was taking command of the
Calypso.
“It's so crazy that—” he paused, as though trying to construct some exquisitely insulting phrase, “—it'll probably succeed. From what I've seen and heard of you, young Ramage, you have three possible fates waiting for you: French round shot lopping off your head; or you'll come a cropper and a court martial will make sure you end up in front of a firing squad, like Admiral Byng; or you'll command your own fleet at an early age. I wouldn't wager a single guinea on which it'll be.”

“Thank you, sir,” said a relieved Ramage. “So keep your guinea waiting safe in your pocket, and please excuse me for a few minutes while I attend to the business on hand!”

He went back to the quarterdeck rail by way of the binnacle, where the flickering candle told him exactly five minutes remained. Aitken stood a yard to his left, holding the speaking-trumpet but otherwise seeming no different from his usual stance during a normal night watch. Ramage sensed, rather than saw, that Jackson was watching the compass and the weather luffs of the sails with the same easy but acute attention of a hovering osprey. The third man, whose task was to turn the glass when the log was heaved, waited for his two mates to return from whatever they were doing running round the ship. The wooden reel on which the logline was wound suddenly began trundling across the deck, dislodged by a sudden and particularly violent roll, and the seaman hurriedly grabbed it.

Ramage finally counted to three hundred. The slow count, each number representing a second, meant that five minutes had passed. Now was the time—but nothing was happening. He began counting again, one-and-two-and-three-and-four … Six minutes and seven, eight and nine …

He walked over to the binnacle again. He stared at the watch, not wanting to believe what the hands confirmed. Yes, several seconds more than ten minutes had elapsed. He went back to the rail. It was absurd to be so precise; the log was not
that
accurate, nor the wind that constant. Any estimate of the speed of the north-going current was no more than a guess, with the prize going to any number between one knot and three. Had that fellow Hicks been keeping to the course as precisely as he claimed? And had Ramage himself made mistakes in working out the course and taking it off the chart? It was easy enough when working with the dim light from a lanthorn to read a course off the compass rose on the chart and make a mistake of a point: Southwick's writing was small, and SW x W1/4W could easily be misread. And was the chart accurately drawn? After all, it was only a copy, with no indication who made the original survey. So the
Calypso,
followed by the Frenchman, could easily be sailing the wrong course at the wrong speed over the wrong estimated distance.

“Clew up the courses,” he told Aitken. That would slow down the
Calypso
appreciably, and with luck the Frenchman would not notice—she would close with the
Calypso
and probably put it down to a fluke of the wind.

Aitken's bellowed orders quickly resulted in the frigate's lowest and largest sails losing their bulging shape. Quickly the clew-lines hauled the corners of the rectangles of canvas up towards the middle. The buntlines hoisted the centres upwards, so that it looked as though a giant hand was squeezing the sails in the middle.

Almost at once the
Calypso
pitched and rolled less violently. Now the fore and maintopsails were doing all the work, but from astern, Ramage hoped, it would be difficult to see that the courses were not still drawing.

He took his telescope from the drawer and steadied himself. The Frenchman was ploughing on, showers of spray leaping away from her stem like a gull's wings. Even in the faint light she looked a fine sight. There was enough spray to outline her hull, as though the ship was a bird preening herself on a nest of light. And yes, she was beginning to close the distance. At least, she seemed to be, but Ramage knew that was what he wanted her to be doing.

“Aitken,” he said, “get the night-glass and see what you make of our friend.”

Aitken braced himself against the roll, after checking that the focusing tube of the telescope was out far enough to suit his eye. He seemed to examine the ship for an age before shutting the telescope with a snap and reporting casually to Ramage, “She's made up a lot o' distance. I have my doubts if she's half a cable astern of us now.

“And she's not reducing her canvas—at least, she hasn't started yet,” he added. “And with this sea, I have my doubts if we were getting a proper reading of our speed.”

“Faster or slower?” Ramage demanded. “Oh, I think we might well have been going … well, quite a bit—perhaps half a knot—”

“Come
on!
” Ramage exclaimed impatiently. “Half a knot slower,” Aitken said, and Ramage realized that the Scotsman had deliberately taken his time, as a hint to Ramage that the tension was rising too high.

But damnation, Aitken did not have the responsibility for possibly drowning everyone. Still, Aitken would drown along with the rest, so it did not make a ha'porth of difference whose responsibility it was. Death was always completely fair, carrying off the guilty and the innocent, the rascals and the good men.

The
Calypso
butted into three successive waves, her stem slicing off sheets of spray which flung aft like heavy rainsqualls. Suddenly Aitken pointed aloft and put the mouthpiece of the speaking-trumpet to his ear, aiming the bell-mouthed open end at the foremasthead.

Ramage waited for Aitken to report whatever had been hailed. Instead the first lieutenant reversed the speaking-trumpet and shouted, “Foremasthead: quarterdeck, here. Repeat your hail.”

Again, the wind whipped the lookout's words away to leeward. Damnation, the lookout must have seen
something,
but in which direction?

Suddenly a man ran up the lee side quarterdeck ladder. “Larboard forward lookout, sir—you can't hear us. Ship or rock dead ahead, maybe three cables, and also breakers five points to larboard, mebbe four cables!”

“Very well, go back and make sure Mr Southwick knows.”

Which was which? Was the rock ahead the northern one, Formica Maggiore, 32 feet high and whitish, with a bank of rocks extending southwards? Or the middle, eight cables to the southeast of it, blackish and with a bank extending north-west? Certainly it was not the southernmost, because there was nothing southwards of it to cause breakers.

A thudding up the starboard side ladder made Ramage turn. “Lookout, starboard bow, sir. Mr Southwick says the middle rock is dead ahead—it's not high enough to be the northern one; and the southern one's five points to larboard.”

“Very well, my compliments to Mr Southwick and tell him to stand by.”

Damn, damn, damn … they had found the ants, but which one to choose? He had hoped they would come up to the northern, the Formica Maggiore, but they were lucky to spot any of them.

So is it to be the middle one, now dead ahead, or the smaller one to larboard? Well, altering course five points to larboard will alert the frigate astern. More important, with the
Calypso
steering direct for the middle rock and the Frenchman precisely in her wake, the
Calypso
's bulk will almost certainly be obscuring the rock—and anyway the French will hardly expect …

And there it was dead ahead, a black smudge on what passed for the horizon. With the ship rolling and pitching it seemed to be bobbing up each side of the masts, the rigging frequently obscuring it as though a net was swinging in front. Distance? Two cables, perhaps less.

Aitken now had his night-glass. “Cable and a half distant, sir, judging from the seas breaking round it.”

Ramage turned to look at the French frigate and was startled to see how much she had caught up. He snatched Aitken's night-glass and inspected her.

“She's run her guns out!” he exclaimed. “She's decided we're British and is getting ready to run up alongside and give us a few broadsides!”

“Aye, that'd be likely,” Aitken agreed. “She probably thinks that going to windward she has a knot or two's advantage over us.”

“As long as everyone on her quarterdeck is concentrating on us! Hellfire, Aitken, quick, a cast of the lead!”

Ramage cursed his own inattention as Aitken shouted through the speaking-trumpet, but almost instantly came back the cry: “By the deep nine, sir!”

Ramage told himself that if he lived, he would promote that leadsman, who had been sensible enough to take a cast the moment he heard the lookout's hail from the fore-topmasthead— the hail which the quarterdeck had missed.

By the deep nine: 54 feet. Close. And the rock dead ahead, closing fast. And astern the Frenchman closing fast. Every damned thing closing fast.

“By the mark five!”

Again the leadsman's hail: five fathoms, which was thirty feet. The
Calypso
had a bare fifteen feet under her forefoot. He strained his eyes. The rock seemed to be racing towards them now, like an approaching ship. Much less than a cable; perhaps only a hundred yards ahead, with the Frenchman a hundred yards astern and beginning to alter course a point, to run up on the starboard side? Damn her!

In an emergency, which way would that French captain turn— to larboard, which meant going about, with the danger in these seas of getting caught in stays, or would he bear away to starboard, bringing the wind round to three or four points on the quarter? That was the sure and safe thing to do, and Ramage guessed he would do it—when the time came!

And there was the rock. The
Calypso
was almost on top of it. No, make an allowance for darkness distorting distance.

“By the mark five!”

The leadsman was working fast; coiling up that much line between casts was hard work.

“Give me the speaking-trumpet,” he told Aitken, “but be ready. If we miss …”

Calling “Stand by” to Jackson, he jammed the mouthpiece against his mouth, took one more look at the rock, and shook his head: he had left it too late. The
Calypso
would hit the rock (or pile up on a shoal circling it) while making seven or eight knots!