Ramage

Chapter 18

RAMAGE hurried from the cabin before the captains could get round the table, walked on to the quarter-deck and looked over the side. About a mile offshore a line-of-battle ship was beating into the anchorage, all plain sail set and her bows a flurry of spray. A commodore's broad pendant flew from her mainmast and she was flying a Union flag from the mizen top-masthead: the signal for all captains to come on board. The Commodore isn't wasting any time, Ramage thought.

Was Gianna still on board the Trumpeter? A lieutenant, telescope to his eye, was standing by the mizenmast and Ramage called:

'Has the Marchesa gone on shore?'

The lieutenant lowered his telescope in surprise.

'Oh - er, no: she's waiting in the clerk's office.'

Ramage ran back towards Croucher's cabin, from which members of the court were now emerging. The clerk's cabin was a tiny box forward of the Captain's accommodation, and in a moment he was flinging the door open.

She glanced up in alarm: she was sitting in the only chair, her hands clasped together.

'Nicholas!'

'I thought you'd gone!'

'No - they wanted me to but...' .

'But what?'

A silly question, but there was too much unexplained for them to be other than shy.

'But -1 wanted to wait until it's all over. Is it?'

He held her hands and looked down at her: the eyes were questioning, worried, beautiful.

'For the time being.'

‘What happened?'

'Commodore Nelson's arriving. Come and watch.'

'Commodore Nelson! The little captain!'

‘Yes - you know him?'

‘No - but in Livorno they spoke of no one else. He is a friend of yours?'

'No - I've never met him.'

'A pity,' she said, standing up. 'If he was, he would help you and make everything all right.'

'I need someone—' he stopped.

'Someone?' she prompted, standing very close, looking up at him.

'—someone about as tall as him but much more interesting.'

‘Who?’ she asked with innocence which made her beauty glow with freshness.

'You.'

‘Then everything is all right.'

Her lips were close to his: but a sudden outburst of shouting made her tauten with fear.

‘What's happening? And why did they fire that gun?'

'The Commodore's signalled that he wants all the captains to go on board his ship.'

'Let us watch,' she said excitedly.

The captains were impatiently pacing up and down the gangway while Croucher bellowed for a boat. Ramage led Gianna to the quarter-deck.

Although he had been at sea almost continually for nearly eight years - for so long that when rarely he saw green fields, country lanes, colourful birds and flowers it was with the fresh curiosity of a stranger — Ramage always felt the same excitement, almost wonder, watching a great warship thrashing her way to windward.

The sunlight burnishing the sea a bright blue was so strong the colour seemed harsh; and the Libeccio, its sharp edge blunted as it blew across the width of Corsica, momentarily stippled the tops of the waves with daubs of white.

The ship, her bold sheerline emphasized by the two parallel yellow strakes running the length of her black hull, came surging in, swooping and plunging over the troughs and crests of the swell waves with the easy ridge-and-furrow flight of a woodpecker. Her powerful rounded bow punched each successive sea, dissolving them into rainbow showers of sparkling diamonds which cascaded over her foredeck or blew away downwind, their moment of beauty quickly past. From the buff-painted masts and yards the great sails arched down in taut curves, catching every ounce of wind, and dark patches on the foot of the courses and headsails showed spray was flying high, soaking the canvas and staining its natural colour - a warm tint of umber, with a touch of raw sienna or perhaps yellow ochre, and which really needed the tones of a rising or setting sun to bring out its richness.

Gianna said: 'Now I know why you are a sailor: I have never seen such a sight.'

There was awe in her voice, as if she understood the raw and naked power of a ship of war and the way it bent the forces of Nature to its own purposes; a hint of awe, too, at the beauty of the ship and the swathe of spray it cut through the sea; and - yes, perhaps even a hint of envy that it was a life in which she could not enter.

Ramage beckoned a midshipman and borrowed the boy's telescope. In the waist of the approaching ship, between the fore- and mainmasts, men were busy round one of the boats stowed there. They would be hooking on the stay-tackle, ready to hoist it out.

Suddenly groups of seamen appeared at the foot of the shrouds of each mast, ant-like in the distance: Captain Towry — for the ship was the Diadem - was preparing to anchor, and the topmen were waiting for the order to scramble aloft to take in the topgallants. He's leaving everything rather late, thought Ramage: there'll have to be some very smart sail-handling in the next few minutes.

Suddenly the men began swarming hand over hand up the shrouds until they were level with the great yards on which were set the courses, the lowest and largest of the sails. Without pausing they climbed on past them, and past the topsails set above, until they were at the crosstrees. From the deck the topgallant yards were hauled round until the wind, instead of filling the sails, blew along the length of the canvas so that it shivered ineffectually.

The yards were then lowered a few feet and in a flash the topmen were scrambling out along them while Gianna exclaimed 'Mio Dio!' at the thought of them working more than a hundred feet above the deck on masts which gyrated like stalks of corn in a high wind.

The sails, already hauled up to the yards like curtains, were furled and secured with gaskets. The men side-stepped along the yards back to the safety of the crosstrees and a moment later were scrambling down the shrouds to the deck.

Strange, thought Ramage: what about the topsails? The ship was by now barely half a mile from the entrance to the harbour: in four minutes or less she would have covered that distance. Then slowly the big fore and main yards were hauled round parallel to the wind so that the courses shivered, and at that instant were hauled right up to the yards in huge, loosely billowing bundles by the men on deck. At once more seamen scurried up the shrouds and furled the sails neatly on the yards - the forecourse was made of more than three thousand square feet of canvas while the maincourse was more than four thousand - and at the same moment the jib and foretopmast stay­sails came tumbling down to the jib-boom and bowsprit.

So Captain Towry was going to heave-to the ship: was she not staying long? What on earth was going on? The Diadem was now inshore of the Trumpeter and only a few hundred yards from the beach. Ramage saw the foretopsail yard being hauled round until it was lying parallel to the wind, and then even farther, so that the wind was pressing the yard and sail back against the mast. Slowly the ship lost speed.

'What are they doing?' asked Gianna.

'Heaving to: stopping the ship without taking in all the 'sails.'

'But how?'

'You see the foretopsail - that sail on the first mast? Well, that's been hauled round so that it is backed: the wind is blowing on to the wrong side of it - trying to push the ship back­wards. But the maintopsail and the mizentopsail - the equiva­lent sails on the second and third masts - haven't been touched, so they are still trying to push the ship forward. The forward push of those two is roughly equal to the backward push of the other one, so the ship stops.'

'But why do they do it?'

'It's a way of avoiding anchoring. Useful, too, if you want to stop only for a few minutes. I expect they've gone in close to send someone on shore in a boat - you can see they're hoist­ing out a boat.'

'Yes.'

'Probably Commodore Nelson is in a hurry to send a message to the Viceroy.'

'Does that mean he is not staying?' she asked anxiously.

'I don't know.'

A few moments later the boat was in the water and pulling for the harbour entrance. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity on board the Diadem: all three topsail yards were hauled round and lowered as topmen raced aloft to furl the sails, and the ship began to drift to leeward. An anchor splashed into the sea, and her sails were neatly furled by the time she came head to wind and settled back on the scope of her anchor cable, like a dog on a leash.

Already Croucher's barge had left the Trumpeter, carry­ing all the captains.

Gianna asked: 'Are you—'

He turned to look at her: she seemed embarrassed.

'Are you free?'

'Yes-why?'

'Can we go on land now?1

He thought for a moment and noticed that a boat had put off from the Lively —Probus had recovered from his illness quickly enough with the Commodore's arrival. Well, no one would want him for an hour or two.