Ramage's Signal (34 page)

Jackson was far from impressed. “If we landed on their beach as survivors they'd have the shirts off our backs, sir; I can't see them giving us dinner.”

“Think about all those Frenchmen we landed, then; they won't have been given a rotten fishhead or an empty wine fiasco to help them on the road to Cagliari.”

“That's true, sir.” The thought brought a grin to Jackson's face.

“And everyone speaking to them in Italian …”

Jackson nodded; he tended to forget the Captain spoke good Italian, and the effect that this could have.

“Can you put on a Sardinian accent, sir?”

“The
Sardi
… in this island alone there are probably two dozen different accents, quite apart from the fact it was owned by Austria until eighty years ago. Certainly I couldn't imitate the accent of this place, Sant' Antioco. Centuries ago they came from Genoa down to somewhere on the Barbary coast opposite here, then moved here when the Algerines oppressed them. They probably use as many Arabic words as Italian. Or archaic Italian words no longer used today.”

Ramage felt slightly irritated by Jackson: until five minutes ago he was concerned only with being generous to some
Sardi
fishermen, and that in turn had led him to recall the Genovesi who, before the Spanish Armada sailed for England, went to North Africa; to Tabarka, Zembra and Djerba, and the Kerkenna Islands near by, in the constant hunt for new fishing grounds. Moslems, Normans, Christians, Catalans, Spaniards—all at some time or another had fought to get the tunny, the coral from the reefs, the slaves and the grain to be found in the triangle formed by Sicily, Sardinia and the Barbary coast. The language resulting over the centuries from such a mixing would be fascinating—and yet the nearest he could get to hear it now was letting this brig run ashore. There was so much of interest, so much to learn—and so little opportunity …

As soon as he was sure the wind would carry the brig down to the waiting fishermen—it seemed they had guessed what was about to happen—Ramage told Jackson to lash the wheel, left the topsail drawing, and ordered his men down into the gig.

Two hours later all the boats were back at the
Calypso
and being hoisted on board, and Southwick was already conjecturing whether the
Calypso
would catch up with Aitken's convoy.

“We'll be sailing less than 24 hours after them, sir,” he commented.

Was it only 24 hours ago that Aitken sailed out past Isolotto la Vacca? The thought surprised Ramage, who, working backwards in time, found Southwick was right. It seemed more like a week.

“I can guess the course Aitken will take, sir, because I gave him some tips about the currents along the Barbary coast. There's a nasty inset into most of those big bays.”

“The course from here to Europa Point is fairly direct,” Ramage said sarcastically: “west by north, about seven hundred miles, and if we were bound for Gibraltar, I'm sure we'd sight them.”

“Aren't we going to Gibraltar, sir?” Southwick was obviously startled.

“Yes, but we have some things to do first.”

His satisfaction at surprising Southwick was short-lived; the Master's face took on the smile of some benevolent and overindulgent bishop; all he lacked, Ramage thought, was a cope, mitre and crozier. “Good,” the Master said, “if there's some action I'll get a good look in now we've no lieutenants on board.”

Ramage found himself strangely reluctant to leave the Golfo di Palmas; like so many other gulfs and bays in the Mediterranean, it held impressions of all the civilizations that had passed through it. Ramage was reminded of a piece of canvas with many portraits painted one on top of the other so that from different angles and in different lights one could see traces of the earlier works.

As the
Calypso
stretched past the Isolotto la Vacca with a brisk south wind and all plain sail set and drawing, Ramage looked astern at the
Passe Partout,
slicing along in the
Calypso
's wake.

“Discipline in that ship for the next few days,” Ramage commented to Southwick, “is going to be fierce!”

“Why, sir? Jackson's a mild enough fellow.”

“Yes, but first Martin and then Orsini worked hard to clean her up: deck holystoned and a shine put on anything that would take a polish. Jackson doesn't know when Martin or Orsini will be on board again, but he's going to make sure she's sparkling.”

“Just to show them how it should be done!” The idea appealed to Southwick. “Pity we can't put the gunner on board as Jackson's second-in-command.”

“He'd beat Jackson,” Ramage said, and knew exactly why. Jackson had enormous initiative, was not the slightest bit frightened of responsibility, and in action appeared never to have heard the word fear. But one word he did know was contempt; if he was contemptuous of a man, then that man ceased to exist; he became what in the West Indies was called a zombie, a dead man walking. Jackson would go about his business in the
Passe Partout
as though the gunner did not exist and the gunner, being the man he was, would be delighted, not insulted; he would probably start painting black lacquer on the guns, or passing all the round shot through a gauge to make sure they were completely spherical, with no bumps of rust.

“How are you heading, Quartermaster?” Ramage called, more to bring himself back to the immediate present than a wish to know if the men at the wheel were on course.

“Nor'-west a half west, sir,” the helmsman said after glancing at the compass on the weather side of the binnacle.

And about 320 miles to go, Ramage thought to himself, if the wind does not head us so we have to start tacking.

Southwick supervised a cast of the log and came forward with the report that they were making six knots and the wind was freshening.

“We're not on the course the convoy took, sir,” he said almost accusingly.

“Of course not. We're not going to the same place.”

“I assumed that,” Southwick said heavily as he noted the time, speed, course and position on the slate. Later, the details would be transferred to the master's log and to the captain's journal, and in due course, as laid down in the Regulations and Instructions, both volumes would be forwarded to the Admiralty, where Southwick assumed they would join an enormous and dusty pile of other logs and journals, unread and merely recorded in some index.

He was sure they were unread because he had served in ships where, for example, a captain had ordered that a man be given nine dozen lashes of the cat-o'-nine-tails and this was quite openly recorded, although two dozen lashes were the legal limit a captain could award; more than that could be ordered only by a court martial. Yet there had been no letter from the Board Secretary expressing their Lordships' displeasure, or even asking for more details.

No, a log or journal became important only if something went wrong, and something going wrong meant in effect losing the ship. Logs and journals were kept in case of trouble; a sort of coroner looking over your shoulder in the hope there would be an inquest.

Southwick's attitude towards life reflected in his cheerful face; he met tomorrow's problems tomorrow; he did not brood about them today. As he looked aft, to see if he had missed any details of the sketch he had made of the coast and which meant that not only had he carried out the instructions for masters but added to his own store of charts and views, he found himself startled that in the course of 24 hours, eight French merchant vessels and one 74-gun ship had been destroyed in the Golfo di Palmas, entirely due to the
Calypso;
six large prizes had been sent off to Gibraltar; and a small tartane had been kept as a tender to the
Calypso.

He pencilled some more shading on to the sketch slightly to change the shape of the south sides of Monte Riciotto, one of the smaller mountains on San Pietro, and Monte Guardia dei Mori, the tallest.

Yes, Isolotto la Vacca also needed a little alteration. When he came to put on some watercolours later, he must remember the thin, distant line of the marsh and salt pans, and also the white sand beach near Porto Pino. The whole stretch of coast seemed peaceful enough now: just one brig heeled over on the beach near the fishermen's village and another ripped open on a reef at the other end of the gulf—they were the only signs of their visit. By now the brig at the village would have been looted by the local people, and as the months and years passed they would gradually strip the wood from the ship, using it to build or repair their own fishing boats. The towers of various shapes, sizes and heights—he wondered when they had last been manned by soldiers. Mr Ramage said Sardinia had been Austrian until about 1720, and Southwick could imagine them keeping a sharp lookout. Who were
they
fighting in 1720?

He asked Ramage, who had coincidentally just remembered another piece of history. “About a hundred years ago, around the turn of the century, Austria owned Sardinia, and Savoy had Sicily, and they exchanged them. I can't remember why—during the Spanish War, perhaps, because Spain occupied Sardinia for a while until she was defeated. Then in 1720 they exchanged
again,
Sardinia going back to Savoy, and Sicily back to Austria.”

Ramage turned and looked astern. The changing fortunes of Sardinia, with Sicily beyond, were something that a Briton found hard to comprehend. Imagine having the ruler of your home, the island on which your whole being existed, exchange it all for another island. Until 1702 a Sardinian would have been a Savoyard; then until 1717 an Austrian, then Spanish when Spain occupied the island for three years; and then suddenly he would be a Savoyard again when there was a second exchange.

He laughed to himself at the thought that for the last two hundred years it was unlikely one Sardinian in a thousand knew or cared who owned him; any tax collector toured that wild countryside at the extreme risk of his life …

J
UST after dawn three days later Ramage stood alone at the quarterdeck rail watching as the sun rising slowly began to light up the Pyrenees showing ahead, through the network of the rigging and each side of the great sails. This stretch of the Mediterranean, from the tiny French port of Collioure at the foot of the northern slopes to the Spanish town of Rosas about 25 miles to the south, always seemed one of the most beautiful parts of the western Mediterranean. Here the Pyrenees, having started over on the cold Atlantic side, and except for a few passes effectively sealing Spain from France, now tumbled down to the Mediterranean, as if thankful to find warmer water and bluer skies.

Here was the border between France and Spain, a border acknowledged in words by Paris and Madrid but of little consequence to the Basques and the Catalans living astride it, speaking their own languages and both contemptuous of the two nations they regarded as trespassers.

Somewhere over there, among the mountains and the coastal passes at which Ramage now looked, Hannibal had marched two thousand years ago with his fifty thousand men, nine thousand cavalry and 37 elephants, to stop the Romans invading Spain. Hannibal had originally come from Carthage, just south of Sardinia. Had he ever visited the Golfo di Palmas?

“That'll be Cap Béar on the larboard bow, with Port Vendres just to the north,” Southwick said, having just come up from below. “With the glass you might pick out two towers, one low down and the other high up.”

Ramage nodded: he knew this part of the coast well.

“Ah, the sun is just catching the snow on the top of Le Canigou, sir. Over nine thousand feet high, that mountain.”

“And a blessing to navigators,” Ramage commented. “An unmistakable shape with those double peaks, and snow for good measure.”

“That's the trouble, the snow makes it difficult to get ‘a good measure,'” Southwick grumbled. “Taking an altitude of Canigou to find the distance off is difficult because with any sun the snow makes it next to impossible to distinguish the peak. Still, no sun usually means the peak is in cloud …”

“You need a tape measure, not a sextant,” Ramage teased.

Sitting at his desk, Ramage took out the French signal book and again turned to the list of semaphore stations. The entry he sought was brief:

“No. 28, Collioure (Pointe del Mich) … Albert St Laurent.” The reference to Pointe del Mich intrigued him. According to some notes in old sailing directions belonging to Southwick, Pointe del Mich was the headland on the south side of the entrance to the narrow bay which, lying in the northern shadow of the Pyrenees, looked as if it had been made by a giant taking a bite out of the coast just where the mountains ended and the land rolled and then flattened into sand dunes and marshes, passing Perpignan and extending all the way round the Gulf of Lions to Marseilles. Then a glance at the chart made it clearer—Pointe del Mich stuck out to sea just far enough to be in sight of the next station to the north, number 27, and the one to the south, number 29, Port Vendres—the old “Port of Venus” of Roman times, well sheltered and, just now, well defended.

This was the difference between the islands of the West Indies and the Mediterranean, of course; from Grenada in the south of the Lesser Antilles to Jamaica in the north-west of the Greater Antilles, buildings and history were recent; little went back more than one hundred and fifty years. But here in the Mediterranean much of what one saw existed before Christ was born. As far as this stretch of coast was concerned, he recalled that the Moors, or Algerines, holding southern Spain were finally driven out only a few years before Columbus sailed to the New World, after creating most of the buildings of any beauty in Spain.

“Mr Southwick, sir!” the Marine sentry called from the door.

The Master reported: “We're two miles off the bay, sir: Jackson's already gone in with the
Passe Partout
and has anchored about a hundred yards beyond the cliff with the semaphore tower on it. They'll think he's gone close inshore to shelter from this south wind because anchoring on the north side, where the fishing boats are, would be a very rolly berth.”