Ramage's Signal (30 page)

“Yes—and you'd better warn him that if neither of us comes back, he'll have to take the
Calypso
to Gibraltar.”

“I think Bowen had better be standing by with some medicinal brandy!”

“You know, Bowen wouldn't even blink if I told him that he had to get the
Calypso
to Gibraltar.”

“He certainly wouldn't,” Southwick agreed, “but he's an unusual surgeon.”

“Yes, and he can play chess.”

Southwick grinned ruefully. “I'm getting the average down, sir; I doubt if I lose two games out of five to him these days.”

“I'm glad of that, but we'd better start preparing those two ships. The Frenchman won't be inside the gulf for another half an hour, but it's going to take time for us to get the
Muscade
and the
Merle
down to Cala Piombo, if that's where she anchors.”

“These blasted French names,” Southwick grumbled, “what do they mean?”

“
Muscade
is nutmeg—I expect she was sailing to the spice islands of the West Indies before the war.
Merle
is simply ‘blackbird.'”

Southwick nodded and picked up his hat. “I'll go up on deck and see where our French friend has got to. I expect you'll want to pick our men.”

After the Master had gone, Ramage took a pencil. He did not need the muster book to choose the men. From what he could remember of the
Muscade
and the
Merle,
both were brigs of similar size, about two hundred and fifty tons. He had not considered them for Gibraltar because he guessed the Admiral would refuse to buy in French powder.

He and Southwick needed the minimum number of men for the operation to keep the boats light. Escaping afterwards would mean rowing like madmen for several minutes. The fastest boat was the gig, so Southwick should have it for the
Muscade.
He would take one of the cutters with the
Merle.

There would be no seconds-in-command; it would be a brief voyage for both brigs. A man at the wheel, eight topmen, three men to handle grapnels, three more for sheets and braces, and then light fuses, and a boat-keeper, and that would be all. That made sixteen, seventeen adding in himself or Southwick. The gig carried sixteen, with eight at the oars, so each boat would be only two-thirds full. The same for the cutter. The totals did not allow for casualties, but that could not be helped.

Small arms? A few pistols and cutlasses, but there should be no fighting. They would need several axes, plenty of slowmatch, flint and steel, and some lanterns to light the film.

Southwick came down the companion-way and into the cabin as the sentry announced him.

“She's still about a mile or more outside the gulf beyond Sant' Antioco. She's not making more than a couple of knots under topsails.”

“The Captain's nervous of the gulf all right, but he may not have a decent chart.”

Ramage quickly outlined his plans and his orders for Southwick, who protested at being given the gig. “That's the captain's boat,” he said. “You should have her, sir.”

“I prefer a cutter, and anyway the boat carrying your weight has to be light.”

Southwick grinned and patted his stomach. “Have you chosen your men yet, sir?”

“No—I'd like to have Jackson and Stafford, but I suggest you muster the topmen and divide them up. Some Marines for the slowmatch, seamen for the grapnels. Oh yes, and boat-keepers: as we're towing our boats they might get painters tangled …” There was no need to elaborate on that risk.

“Can I go and tell the gunner now, sir?”

Ramage grinned and nodded. “Then we'd better get over to our ships. At least we won't have to bother to weigh or buoy the anchor cables!”

Southwick paused a moment. “Ten minutes for the slow-match—isn't that rather long, sir?”

“Ten minutes is not a very long time to get everyone down into the boats and row a hundred yards.”

“I suppose not, sir, but I was thinking of the French boarding and putting ‘em out.”

“They won't know where to look; they'll be taken by surprise and will assume the
Merle
and
Muscade
are fire-ships, so they'll be expecting flames.”

Ramage scrambled up the side of the
Merle,
a pistol-butt grinding into his ribs, and followed by Jackson and the rest of the men in the red cutter, leaving behind only the boat-keeper. He kept the painter clear of the chain-wales and port-lids as another of the men let the boat drift aft and then made up the rope on a convenient cleat with a cheery: “You'll be best off if we make any mistake wiv the powder!”

Two seamen held lanterns while another two swung big mauls to drive out the wooden wedges holding the battens in place round the edge of the coamings to free the heavy canvas cover protecting the thick hatch boards.

“Just get out three boards,” Ramage said, and the canvas was rolled back enough for them to be lifted up.

Even the weak light of the lantern showed that Ramage's guess had been right, and the powder had been stowed in the aftermost of the brig's two holds: the copper hoops of the powder barrels reflected a dull redness. They were well stowed with shifting boards. “Bung up and bilge free,” Ramage thought to himself: the bung of each barrel was uppermost, and none of the barrels rested against the side, or the bilge, of the ship. A wise shipper always paid a premium and specified that his goods, if in barrels, should be stowed “bung up and bilge free,” but the master of a ship carrying so much powder needed no urging: a bung working itself loose as the ship pitched would mean, if the barrel was not stowed bung uppermost, that a sixth of a ton of powder would cascade into the bilges and, despite the copper hoops, if one barrel rubbed against another, it could cause sufficient friction to ignite a few grains—fewer than a dandy would bother to blow from his sleeve if he spilled some snuff—and that would be enough to destroy the ship.

The top tier of barrels was only three feet below the level of the hatch coaming, and Ramage looked round for Stafford.

“You have those lengths of fuse?”

“Aye aye, sir.” Stafford held up a canvas bag.

The sight of the bag made Ramage angry again. He had asked the gunner for lengths of slowmatch that would burn ten minutes, with a foot left over at one end. The damned man had backed and filled, saying he could not be certain of the burning time of a length of slowmatch between five minutes and thirty. Finally Ramage had decided to use the much less rugged fuse, and fortunately the
Calypso
's magazine contained two types made from mealed powder, the finest available. But again the gunner had avoided specifying the speeds at which they burned, and an enraged and frustrated Ramage had made the man bring up his notebooks and found that they recorded that fuse made from good mealed powder burned at the rate of three inches in seven seconds and the other twelve inches in one minute. Ramage chose the slower and had then given the whole coil to Jackson and Stafford. After doing a quick sum, he told them to cut ten eleven-foot lengths. That would give each one ten minutes' burning time, plus a foot.

Five lengths had been handed over to Southwick for the
Muscade,
and now Stafford had five lengths for the
Merle.
Fuse burned fast, so for this sort of work long lengths were needed; on the other hand, with the longer fuse, as Jackson had pointed out, there was the advantage that when the fuse was first lit the flame was farther from the powder.

Already two seamen were calling from the outboard end of the starboard maintopsail yardarm to a third standing below. Ramage heard a thud as a rope dropped, then the rattle of chain. They were fitting the first of the grapnels which would hang from all the yards at varying heights, ready to catch in the French 74's rigging or any hull projection so that the
Merle
stuck to her like a burr on a woollen sock.

The topmen, without awaiting orders, were already aloft, checking over the gaskets holding the sails furled and slackening them, and making sure of the lead of halyards. As soon as they finished their work, the grapnel men would trace the leads of braces, sheets and tacks.

After glancing at his watch by the light of the lantern that Jackson was carrying (Ramage and Southwick had decided that apart from the 74 being too far away to see any lights, it would be quite natural for lanterns to be in use on board merchant ships at anchor) he found they were several minutes ahead of the rough schedule.

Ramage went back to the opened hatch and found Stafford and another seaman, Wells, inside and grunting as they gently tapped out the bung of a powder barrel using a small copperheaded maul.

Stafford glanced up and saw Ramage standing in the moonlight looking down at him. “Yer know, sir, gives yer a funny feelin' sittin' on top o' a hunerd an' fifty tons o' powder!”

“I'm sure it does. Try standing,” Ramage said unsympathetically. “And even though I'm up here, I doubt if the extra inch of deck planking gives me much of an advantage.”

“S'pose not, sir, but this bluddy bung … ah! Here she comes.”

The moonlight was bright enough for Ramage to spot the small hole in the top of the barrel and see how carefully Stafford wiped the bung clean of powder and put it down beside the maul. Then he pushed a finger into the hole, obviously testing how far it was to the powder, which always shook down like flour in a jar.

“Four inches,” he said to himself. “That means the fuse goes in eight inches. So a foot to spare were just right.”

He moved so that he was astride another barrel.

“Let's ‘ave the maul, ‘Arry.”

Again he began tapping to lift the bung of the new barrel, at the same time blowing gently to disperse any grains that came out with the copper-sheathed bung. Quickly he pulled it out, wiped off any traces of powder, and passed it and the maul to Wells.

“Three inches,” he announced after putting his finger into the bunghole. He saw Ramage still watching him. “The French contractors seem ‘onest enough, sir: they don't sell short measure.”

“There are no contractors,” Ramage said. “Like our Board of Ordnance, they make their own.”

“Supposed to be poor stuff though, ain't it, sir?”

“Yes—but don't get careless! It burns all right, but not as evenly as ours. That means if you fire five rounds from the same gun at the same elevation you'll get first grazes at five different places.”

“Well, we won't have to bother here,” Stafford grunted as he slid carefully across to the third barrel and called for the maul.

Ramage walked aft to find Jackson turning the wheel one way and then the other. “Just testing the wheel ropes, sir. Six turns from hard over to hard over.”

“You might look at the rudder-head and tiller, in case of rot …”

“Done that already, sir,” Jackson said. “By the way, the three axes are ready on the foredeck beside the cable.”

Slight movements in the rigging caught Ramage's eye, and he saw four grapnels spinning slightly in the breeze like dead carrion crows suspended outside a gamekeeper's lodge. The three men were now working out on the end of the foreyard, rigging the remaining grapnels.

Ramage walked forward to where the second anchor was stowed in its chocks. It was well lashed in its place so that a heavy sea should not dislodge it. Yet if the brig and the 74 collided, one of the flukes might well embed itself in the planking of the Frenchman's hull, a stroke of luck one could not rely on but might encourage. He told a seaman to collect an axe from the foredeck and cut some of the anchor lashings. He waited until the man returned and described which to cut, not wanting to see the anchor suddenly drop over the side, because its cable was stowed below.

He walked aft to the lantern, looked at his watch again and saw they should soon get under way.

“Six minutes to go!” he bellowed so that all the men could hear.

At the hatchway he saw that Stafford and Wells had removed five bungs, and that one thin black line, a fuse, already led from the deck outside the coaming, over the top and down into the hold to the bung-hole of a barrel, where it disappeared like an escaping snake. Stafford would have pushed the fuse well down into the powder, using precisely the extra foot of length, and it was held in place by an encircling collar of cloth pushed down round it, holding it steady in the centre of the bung-hole.

A Marine was now standing by the coaming: his job was to make sure no one accidentally touched a fuse so that its other end was pulled out of a barrel.

Yet it was all too obvious!

As Ramage stood there looking at the hatch he put himself in the place of a French officer jumping down on to the
Merle
's deck from the 74 and seeing five sparkling and sizzling fuses leading down into a partly-open hold. In that moment he would know the
Merle
was not a fire-ship about to burst into flames and that he risked nothing if he snatched out those burning fuses and tossed them over the side.

He waited as Wells, under Stafford's direction, draped one more length of fuse over the edge of the coaming, then a third, fourth and finally the fifth. After a few moments, Stafford and Wells climbed out of the hold. Stafford, mopping his face, saw Ramage and said: “It's remarkable ‘ot down there, sir.”

“Come over here—now take a good look at it,” Ramage said without comment.

“Yus, I see what you mean, sir: the first Frog on board is going ter see fuses and guess …”

“Throw one of those hatch boards over the side, put down two again—leaving the gap against the coaming—and then pull the canvas cover back in place across the hatch, putting a roll in the edge so that it doesn't touch the fuses. Then I doubt if anyone jumping on board would spot anything in the excitement—the fuses should have burnt enough that they'd have gone under the canvas and out of sight.”