Ramage's Diamond (37 page)

The day wore on slowly. At half past eleven the order “Clear decks and up spirits” was given and the rum was served out. At noon the men went to dinner. Ramage and Southwick were doing watch and watch about, and both of them were hard pressed not to hail the lookouts from time to time to see if
La Créole
had hoisted any signals.

The men were still below when an excited hail came: “Deck there, the schooner has hoisted a French flag!”

Ramage shouted to Jackson to fire a musket shot to alert the
Surcouf
and ordered a bos'n's mate to pipe “Man the capstan.” For the moment there was no rush: Wagstaffe's signal meant that he had sighted the French convoy rounding Pointe des Salines and definitely identified it. The French had a good ten miles to sail before they reached the Fours Channel, and Ramage did not want to risk his two frigates being seen by a French frigate which might stay out farther to the west. From now on
La Créole
's signals would be hoisted for one minute only, single flags whose meanings could be known only to those with copies of the list that Ramage had issued to Aitken, Wagstaffe and the petty officer in command of the Diamond batteries.

Southwick had heard the musket shot but not the lookout's hail. Hurrying up the companion-way he inquired anxiously: “The French or the Admiral, sir?”

“The French,” Ramage said crisply, “and they're on time, you notice. But we can't be sure yet that the Admiral isn't chasing them round the Pointe. Man the capstan and heave round until we're at long stay. We'll be seeing some more signals from Wagstaffe soon and know what is happening.”

Although Ramage had not ordered the men to quarters—time enough for that on the way down to the Diamond—Jackson had already come up to the quarterdeck, where he would act as quartermaster, responsible for seeing that the men at the wheel carried out Ramage's orders. Now Orsini hurried up the companion-way, his dirk round his waist and holding the signal book and a list of the special signals for
La Créole.
He had his own telescope under his arm and began strutting along the quarterdeck. For a moment Ramage was reminded of grackles at Barbados, the large friendly blackbirds with long, stiff tails. They too strutted and whenever he saw one he always pictured it with a telescope under its wing. The boy has a right to strut, he thought affectionately. Although at sea for only a few weeks, he had already soaked up more seamanship than most youngsters get drummed into them in a year. Orsini had an all-consuming curiosity about ships and the sea and was eager to learn. He was here on board the
Juno
because he had badgered Gianna into persuading Ramage to take him. Far too many “younkers” went to sea as captain's servants (an inaccurate description since they were apprentices rather than servants) or midshipmen because their parents decided on it. In many families the eldest son inherited, the second went into the Navy, the third the Army, the fourth the Church, and a fifth was indentured to the East India Company, with high hopes that he would become a nabob and fears he would be hard put to remain a clerk and not fall off his counting house stool. Orsini was there from choice and all the more useful for it.

By now the men were heaving round on the capstan and he glanced across at the
Surcouf.
She too was heaving in, with Bevins the fiddler perched on the capstan. He was thankful he had spent the previous evening with Aitken and Wagstaffe going over everything he and they could think of. It should save a great deal of signalling.
La Créole
reports the French in sight by hoisting a Tricolour and whichever of the two frigates spots the signal first fires a musket shot and both frigates heave in to long stay. After that, the
Surcouf
follows the
Juno
's movements until they are approaching the Diamond. Then it would be time for the signal book, but both Aitken and Wagstaffe now understood so well what he anticipated would be his tactics that few signals should be needed.

There was another hail from aloft. “Schooner, sir. She's hoisted a single flag.”

Ramage had barely acknowledged the hail before Paolo, telescope to his eye, was calling, “Number seven, sir. That's
Enemy convoy comprises seven merchant ships or transports.
”

A big convoy whose ships would carry enough to keep Martinique going for several months. Ramage took off his hat and wiped his brow, although now the perspiration suddenly felt cold. A big convoy meant a big escort and Wagstaffe's next signal would tell him how many frigates there were. The signal after that, if there was one, would tell him how many ships of the line were down there off Pointe des Salines.

“Deck there! She's lowered that flag and hoisted another!”

“Number four, sir!” Paolo shouted excitedly.
“The escort includes four frigates.”

“Watch for the next one,” Ramage growled, and felt time slowing down as tension knotted his muscles.

“They're hauling the second one down, sir!” the masthead lookout reported.

Were they bending on another flag or simply taking the last one off and making up the halyard on its cleat? A minute passed, and then two. The capstan was groaning, and Jackson was watching him rubbing the scar on his brow, while Paolo kept his telescope trained on
La Créole.

Aitken had seen the two signals and, like Ramage, was waiting anxiously to see if there was a third. Like Ramage he knew that it would be a death sentence for them all, whether it reported one ship of the line or ten.

He had often wondered how he would feel if he received orders that would probably cost him his life if he carried them out. Now he thought he knew. Many times in the past few years he had been given orders that had sent him into action where there was a chance of being killed or maimed. Although that was always frightening, death was far from certain. The thought in most minds was that death took the next man and left you, so there was a good chance of getting through alive. It was vastly different when the orders told you in effect that the odds were so enormous you were most unlikely to survive.

Such orders were like a long-faced and mournful-voiced judge sitting bewigged in his high chair and passing a death sentence on you. A flag signal from
La Créole
saying there was a ship of the line as well as four frigates with the French convoy would mean that by sunset there would not be a dozen men left alive in the
Juno
or the
Surcouf.
If Wagstaffe carried out his instructions he would survive because he had been given strict orders that if things became desperate he was to escape and get to Barbados to warn the Admiral.

So here he was, a damnable long way from Dunkeld, waiting to see if the judge was going to sentence him and the Surcoufs. Surprisingly, he felt no fear, or at least not the kind of fear he had known before, when his stomach seemed filled with cold water, his knees lost their strength and he wanted to run into a dark corner and hide. Perhaps it was another sort of fear he had never met before. He did not feel it in his body, really, although there was no denying that his stomach muscles were knotting. It was lurking at the back of his mind, like a mist forming in the valley at Dunkeld of an autumn's evening, slowly and gently soaking his jacket and kilt. But it did not make him want to run into a dark comer. In fact it was having the opposite effect, making him a little impatient, perhaps, much as a man sentenced to be hanged might want to get it all over as quickly as possible.

This was not how he had imagined it, and the more he thought the more he knew that although the final effect would be the same as receiving a death sentence from a judge, the way he felt now was not the way he would feel if he was about to be marched off to a condemned cell.

The sunshine and bright colours, the deep blue of the sea, the diving pelicans and slowly wheeling frigate birds made some difference. So did the palm trees along the white sandy beach and the fact that he was commanding his own frigate, however briefly. When he took her into her last battle he would be the Captain, and he would be unlikely to revert to being a first lieutenant again because there would be no ship left for anyone to command. Yet it was not really any of those things that accounted for his mood, although admittedly if he had to die it was satisfying to do so commanding his own ship.

He had been watching the
Juno
's anchor cable through his telescope, noting how it had been hove in until it made the same angle as her mainstay. He glanced back to her quarterdeck and saw a man standing there motionless in white breeches and blue coat, a cocked hat on his head. A man who, with his wealth and social position, could have been standing in a fashionable London drawing-room, with every mother of an unmarried daughter circling him, the girls laughing gaily at his slightest joke, the mothers exclaiming with delight and planning a wedding at Westminster Abbey. Or he could have been in Cornwall, where the Ramage family had big estates, living the life of a wealthy landowner, with nothing worse to bother him than an occasional raid by poachers on the pheasant runs.

There was also this Italian Marchesa. After naming the battery on the Diamond after her the former Tritons had said she was the most beautiful woman most of them had ever seen, with the spirit of an unbroken Highland pony. The men could not understand why Captain Ramage had not married her yet, because there seemed little doubt that they were both in love.

Instead of staying behind in London or on the Cornish estate, Ramage was in the West Indies standing on the quarterdeck of his frigate with deadly danger two or three hours away. But this danger was of his own choosing too, because no one would expect him to take two frigates into action against such odds with not a ship's company shared between them.

Yet he was going to, and it was his own decision. The previous evening Aitken had been appalled and not a little frightened when Captain Ramage had begun by explaining the possibilities open to them, the ways that at least some of the convoy could be destroyed. Gradually he had become interested in the way the Captain outlined the alternatives open to the French and to themselves, then fascinated by the man's words, fascinated by the way he took a sheet of paper, pencilled in a few lines showing ships' tracks and the wind direction, and showed that what had seemed impossible could perhaps be done, using surprise. That was the word he had used frequently, “Surprise,” with the corollary that if you could not find it naturally, you created it.

Looking back on the evening, Aitken realized that the solitary figure on the
Juno
's quarterdeck was responsible for his present unlooked-for but welcome state of mind. It was marvellous that his old fears had vanished in such a way that he felt sheepish ever to have felt them all the times he had previously been in action. Down in the
Juno
's cabin in the dim lanternlight, listening to the Captain's quiet voice, watching old Southwick nod, hearing the answers to questions from Wagstaffe, fear somehow became remote: something that might be felt by lesser men in other ships and squadrons, but certainly of no interest to any man in the
Juno,
the
Surcouf
or
La Créole.

The Captain was a sort of mirror, Aitken thought. He held a mirror in front of each man, and the reflection the man saw was of the person he would like to be, fearless, intelligent, resourceful … A mirror was not a good simile because it implied having only a glimpse of the ideal that vanished when the mirror was removed. The curious thing about Captain Ramage was that, having made you look at the man you'd like to be, he left you feeling that you
were
that man. He changed you, or your attitudes, so you would never again be fearful or a weakling.

Aitken shrugged his shoulders. He felt the man's influence powerfully but he could not analyse it satisfactorily. Perhaps it was what was called leadership. Until yesterday evening he had assumed that leadership was a question of being the senior officer, the man who gave orders and made decisions. The Captain was his own age, yet he could draw more out of other men than they thought they possessed and leave them determined not to fail him or themselves.

Now he understood the devotion of the dozen former Tritons who had joined the
Juno
just before she left Spithead. Each one of them was just another good seaman, well trained and disciplined, a prime topman and a welcome addition to any ship's company. Yet they were more than that. They seemed to carry a confidence that at times bordered on arrogance. The Captain never showed them any favouritism, rather the reverse and it was something Aitken had never met before. Each and every one of those men would at a word or gesture not only follow Captain Ramage on whatever desperate business he might embark, but had done so many times in the past and only wanted to be allowed to go on.

Jackson carried a Protection declaring him to be an American subject, so that he need only pass the word to an American Consul and he would be released from the Royal Navy. Yet he was the cheerfully willing unofficial leader of the Tritons as well as being the Captain's coxswain. They were a motley group. The seaman Stafford made no secret of the fact that being a locksmith had been a natural stepping stone to becoming a burglar, a calling interrupted only when the press-gang seized him. The Italian Rossi's devotion was such that Aitken had the uncomfortable feeling that at the slightest hint from the Captain, he would slit a man's throat without question …

The quartermaster had obviously been trying to attract his attention for some time. “Mr Lacey hailed from the fo'c's'le, sir: we're at long stay.”

“Very well,” Aitken said, realizing that his thoughts had been miles away from the
Surcouf.

“An' the schooner, sir, she 'asn't 'oisted another signal.” Aitken stared at the man. “How long ago did she hoist the last one?”

“Five minutes or so, sir!” the startled man answered. “Perhaps more.”