Ramage's Signal (8 page)

“Yes,
mon colonel!
” the sergeant said hoarsely, obviously deciding such perfidiousness with grenades could be contrived only by someone of such exalted rank. “We lie in our bunks awaiting your orders.”

“Very well. Do you have a tinder box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pick up the lantern and light it.”

Ramage heard the man's movement, then the scraping as he found the lantern and set it on the table, the faint click as he opened the door and the scratching as he began striking flint on steel. Then Ramage went back to the track and told Paolo and Jackson what had been agreed.

Paolo, who had heard most of the talk in French with the sergeant, said miserably: “Only one shot fired and it's all over.”

“You'd feel differently if you were Wilson,” Ramage said unsympathetically. “How is he, by the way?” he asked Jackson.

“Oh, Staff and Rossi bandaged him up and he's around here somewhere—he's left-handed anyway and wants to find a Frenchman to shoot.”

By now the glow in the guardhouse was turning into a strong light as the sergeant lit the candle from his tinder box and called: “Colonel—we have the light. Now what are your orders?”

“Wait a moment.”

Those bunks were the best places for the prisoners. “Jackson—we'll tie them to the bunks as Stafford suggested. He and Rossi can do the lashing—the fewer of our men in the guardhouse the better. Have two men leaning in at each window with pistols and tell ‘em to shoot to kill at the slightest sign of trouble.

“I'll be inside with Rossi and Stafford; you stay at the door with Mr Orsini—and you'd better hold the lantern,” he told the American.

While Jackson passed on the instructions to his men, Ramage gave the French sergeant his orders and stood to one side of the doorway, in shadow but able to see inside, watching as the seven men obediently climbed into their bunks, holding their arms out sideways so that their wrists hung over the edge each side.

Startled by a thudding noise, Ramage discovered that Stafford was cutting lengths of line with his cutlass, using the doorframe as a chopping board, passing each one to Rossi, who was counting in Italian.
“Cinque
…
seis
…
siete
… is enough, Staff.”

Jackson called: “My men are ready at the windows, sir. But if there's any trouble, do make for the door, sir!”

“I will,” Ramage assured him. “Shooting pistols in a room is fifty times more dangerous than facing a ship of the line's broadside!”

As he walked into the guardhouse, Ramage said to Stafford: “Secure that plump, bald fellow first. He's the one that shot Wilson.”

The two seamen had one more man to secure when suddenly there was confused shouting on the track immediately outside the guardhouse. Jackson shut the door of the lantern and in the darkness pushed Orsini away from the doorway, out of the line of fire.

Ramage, nearly blinded by the darkness, made for the dark-grey rectangle of the doorway and as he moved tried to distinguish the voices. Obviously a group of Frenchmen from one of the barrack huts was attacking, or the alarm had been raised in the village and the local militia had been called out.

The moment he was outside the door the first thing he heard—indeed he seemed surrounded by it—was a barrage of cursing in the English of a dozen counties or more. New voices, he realized; not the men of Jackson's party.

“Stand fast, all of you!” he bellowed.

In the sudden silence that followed he said: “This is Captain Ramage's party. Who has just arrived?”

“Sorry, sir, it's Rennick, but we heard a shot and we thought the guards had overpowered you. The lantern was throwing shadows and in the last rush we didn't recognize—”

“Mr Rennick,” Ramage interrupted him, “don't apologize for trying to rescue me! I was careless, which is why you heard the shot and Wilson has a bullet in his shoulder. But you? How about your parties?”

“All five barracks are secured, sir; all the French troops embarked in the two cutters and on their way out to the
Calypso.
”

“Did you—?”

“And here are all the papers in the camp, sir,” Rennick said, handing Ramage a large leather pouch. “Nothing was destroyed. There's just one officer, and I took the liberty of holding on to him in case you wanted to question him immediately. He's under guard and sitting in your gig.”

“Very well, Rennick, that's excellent: it's been a good night for your Marines, and give them my thanks. Perhaps you'd take over this French guard—we'll ferry them out to the
Calypso
in the gig, but first I'd like to talk to that Lieutenant.”

“The cutters will be back very soon, sir,” Rennick said. “They'll be bringing a half platoon of Marines with them—I didn't know whether or not you'd want a garrison here.”

Ramage realized that the French prisoners had the uniforms he needed. Suddenly his wild idea seemed possible. “Yes, it's a job for the Marines—but pick small ones: they're going to have to wear French uniforms. We'll strip the prisoners and give them seamen's clothing, and your men will have to get the best fits possible.”

Fifteen minutes later Ramage was scrambling over the bow of his gig as it was held by several seamen: in the last hour or so—he could not guess how long they had been because patches of cloud were now hiding the more obvious star constellations—a slight swell had started.

In the darkness he could see a shadowy figure in the stern-sheets, lying awkwardly, sprawled sideways. Rennick reported: “That's the French Lieutenant. They've got him in handcuffs and leg irons.”

“You can take off the handcuffs. If he tries to escape by jumping over the side, the leg irons will make sure he drowns. Now, you go back and garrison the place with your Marines and take Orsini with you: he will deal with any stray Frenchmen. I'm taking this Lieutenant to the
Calypso
and I'll be back at daylight, but I'll make sure those French uniforms are sent over for your men.”

“Very well, sir; I'll inspect my guards. There'll be no sleeping sentries at the guardhouse!”

“Make sure Orsini is always within hearing of the guardhouse: if any Frenchman turns up, the sentries must whistle for him and not talk …”

“Yes, sir,” Rennick said patiently, having received his orders several minutes earlier and understanding them thoroughly.

The Marine sergeant pulled the French officer's arms up, pushed the rudimentary key into the lock of the handcuffs, and then gave them a bang with the back of his cutlass to overcome the squeaky stiffness of the hinge.

Ramage saw the Lieutenant cringing, obviously assuming that the removal of the handcuffs was a preliminary to removing his head with the same cutlass. Ramage waited while the man sat upright and then said coldly in French: “Sit quietly and nothing will happen to you.”

“But—who are you? What happened?”

“You will understand soon,” Ramage said, wanting to ensure as much surprise as possible when he came to question the man.

R
AMAGE turned the lantern over his desk round on its hook so that the dim light fell on the leather pouch which Rennick had handed to him on the beach. Large and made of heavily grained, thick leather, once polished black, it was a relic of the monarchy or, more accurately, a sad representative of the new regime: the royal coat of arms had once been embossed on the flap, but someone had crudely scratched out the gilding of the
fleur-de-lys
without entirely destroying the pattern, merely disfiguring it.

The pouch was stuffed with papers, many crumpled. Clearly Rennick and his men had been in a hurry when they grabbed everything. Ramage shook the papers out and spread them on the desktop.

He reached out for a slim book, and then for something that looked more like a counting-house ledger.

As soon as he opened the slim book he saw it comprised a dozen pages, perhaps more, and was the key to the semaphore code. The ledger was in fact the daily signal log, each entry signed. The first signal was dated more than a year earlier; the latest had been received “from the west” and sent on eastward an hour before sunset the previous evening. Each entry was written clearly and gave the name of “the chief signalman.” There were only two names, so presumably his guess about two watches during daylight was correct, and the senior of each was the “chief.” The writing was so good that obviously this log was the final copy of a rough log, or they scribbled a signal down on a piece of paper and transferred it to the log after it had been passed on.

He decided to read through the last few days' signals later; for the moment he was more interested in how the semaphore worked. It was an invention of the Ministry of Marine and Colonies, as the first page proudly announced, although the guards at the camp had all been soldiers. Ramage had not seen the Lieutenant's uniform because the poor fellow was still dressed in his nightshirt.

The next page gave instructions for the siting and building of semaphore stations: they should be mounted as high as possible (“always bearing in mind that some desirable peaks or headlands might be too frequently hidden in cloud to be used”) and always within clear sight of the other station on each side. This, the Ministry warned, should be checked by direct observation; no reliance should be placed on maps or charts.

Stations were to be manned from first light until dusk and this was to be interpreted as meaning from the time the next tower could first be seen in the morning until it was indistinguishable in the evening. The chief signalman would be responsible for the telescope and keep it locked up at night.

A rough log must be kept “on the platform” and signed by the signalman who took down the message, and this would, as soon as practicable, be copied into the station signal log and signed by the chief signalman of the watch, and once a day by the commanding officer of the station, who was in any case to be told at once if any important signals were received, even if only for passing to the next station.

At all times … and so it went on: Ramage reflected that the minds and limited vocabularies of the ministry clerks who drafted such books ran in the same narrow and rutted tracks whatever their nationality.

And then, on page eight, was the key to the code. At first glance the diagrams seemed to be very simple. The big wooden frame had five opening windows or shutters. Four were at the corners of a square with the fifth above in the centre. Each letter of the alphabet was formed by opening shutters to form patterns so that there were twenty letters. J was missing, and single signals represented P and Q, U V W and X Y and Z, so one had to guess which was the correct letter. Numbers were simple—the X Y Z signal, all five shutters open, was repeated twice, and then the numbers 1 to 9 were represented by the same signals as the first nine letters of the alphabet, with the letter 0 also acting as zero. To change back to letters from numbers, the signalmen again sent X Y Z twice.

Ramage saw that it was a laborious, slow but secure way of passing messages. Every letter of every word had to be spelled out, but there would be no mistakes. Nor could there be many situations where there was any urgency, and the garrison of a semaphore station had nothing else to do …

Now for the signal log. Yesterday's signals: the last one, addressed simply to Station Eighteen, said: “Powder will be sent.” Before that, Station Twenty was told: “Tell ship grain not available here.” Where was “here?” Presumably Toulon.

Ramage read back through four pages until he found Station Thirty-four reporting briefly: “First ship of convoy only just arrived.” That answered the previous signal, presumably from Toulon, which asked the station when the convoy was due to sail.

In the lower right-hand drawer of his desk Ramage found the signal book he had taken from the captured frigate and looked at the list of names which included Foix and Aspet. He saw that the number thirty-four was printed against Barcelona, while Toulon had number one. Here, Foix, was twelve and Aspet across the bay was thirteen. The last station, at the opposite end to Toulon, was Cartagena, the great Spanish naval base. The advantage of having such swift communication was obvious and the system was ingenious.

He put the signal log book aside. The wind had dropped completely and there was not the slightest cooling draught through the cabin. He glanced up to make sure the skylight was open. Now for the pile of correspondence. Only four or five had the Ministry of Marine's seal, and they were routine: the Lieutenant commanding the station had been overpaid for several months and the Ministry were involved in an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to get the money back. The letters showed that the Lieutenant was a naval officer, anyway, not a soldier. The remaining letters were from a colonel in Toulon who appeared to head the department responsible for provisioning the semaphore stations.

Ramage collected up the letters and put them in the pouch; he would read them individually when he had some spare time, but it was obvious that if a similar semaphore station could be set up at, say, Newhaven and be responsible to the Admiralty and garrisoned by the Horseguards, its capture by an enemy would produce a similar haul of dreary and routine correspondence.

The Marine brought in the Lieutenant, a mournful-looking man who, unused to appearing in public in a grubby nightshirt, did not know what to do with his bony hands, which stuck out of the sleeves like the crossbar of a scarecrow. His eyes were still bleary; his thin, long face looked furtive because he had not shaved for two or three days and the shadows thrown by the lantern gave him the appearance of a seedy village grocer caught stealing a
gigot de mouton
while the butcher was at mass.

When the sentry, holding the man's arm, jolted him to a stop in front of Ramage's desk, the Lieutenant finally stood to attention, head bent sideways because of the low headroom, his eyes lowered, his mouth so tightly shut that his lips looked like a small wrinkle.