Ramage and the drum beat

CHAPTER TWO

When he was sober, John Smith the Second looked sly and foxy, an impression heightened by his small, wiry body; but once he had sunk his tot of rum - and any others he'd won by gambling - his features softened and the shifty eyes settled down so his drink-mottled face had the blissful look of a poacher after a successful night's raid on the squire's game preserves. Rated in the muster book as an able seaman, and listed as 'the Second' to distinguish him from another seaman of the same name, Smith was also the Kathleen's band. He had a fiddle which, as long as he was not sober, he enjoyed playing, and Sunday was his busy day. He played hymns for the service in the forenoon, and in the afternoon sat on the barrel of the windlass scraping away as the men danced.

Ramage had been on watch for half an hour and although he valued Smith both as a seaman and a means of keeping the men happy, the sawing of the fiddle was an outrage to a musical ear; so much so that Ramage felt he could cheerfully shoot the fiddle out of John Smith the Second's nimble fingers.

Suddenly he remembered the case of duelling pistols which the Viceroy of Corsica, Sir Gilbert Elliot, an old friend of his family, had sent on board at Bastia as a present when he heard Ramage had been given his first command. He had not yet had time to try them out, and now was a good opportunity. He passed the word and a few moments later Jackson had the brass-edged mahogany case open on the cabin skylight, wiping off the protective film of oil from both the pistols. They were a beautiful matched pair made by Joseph Manton, whose lion and unicorn label was stuck inside the lid of the case. Each gun had a long hexagonal barrel and a rich-grained walnut stock.

Ramage picked up one of them. It was perfectly balanced. The stock fitted into his palm as though the pistol was a natural extension of his arm; his index finger curled round the trigger as if the gun had been specially made for his hand. And the mahogany case was fitted with a mould for casting shot, a stamp for cutting out wads, flasks of powder and a box of extra flints. The set was, Ramage thought, a credit to the gunmaker of Hanover Square, and he richly deserved the proud announcement on the label, 'Gun Maker to His Majesty'.

In the meantime Jackson had loaded the other pistol.

'It's a lovely piece, sir,' he said, handing it to Ramage. 'I'll go down and get some bits of wood from the carpenter's mate to use as targets.'

'And pass the word to ignore the sound of shots!' Ramage said.

A few minutes later Jackson was back with a bundle of wood under his arm. Ramage, who had loaded the second pistol, climbed up on to the breech of the aftermost carronade, balancing himself against the roll of the ship. He sighted with the pistol in his right hand, then tried the left.

'Right, Jackson, throw over the largest piece!'

The wood arched up into the air and splashed into the sea several yards off and began drawing away as the ship sailed on.

Ramage had cocked the pistol and brought up his right arm straight from his side, sighted along the flat top of the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. A tiny plume of water, like a feather, jumped up two yards beyond the piece of wood.

'All right for traverse but too much elevation sir!' Jackson called.

Almost at once Ramage fired the second pistol with his left hand. The wood jumped and the shot whined off in ricochet.

'Phew,' commented Jackson. 'Left-handed, too!'

Ramage grinned. It had been a lucky shot because usually he had a tendency to pull a pistol to the left when firing with his left hand.

He gave both pistols back to Jackson to re-load and as he jumped down from the carronade he saw Gianna coming up the companionway.

'Accidente!' she exclaimed. 'Are the enemy in sight?'

'Target practice - I'm trying out the pistols Sir Gilbert gave me.'

Southwick came up, and then Antonio joined them and watched Jackson as he rammed the shot home.

'Duelling pistols, Nico? Surely they're rather long in the barrel for use in a ship?'

'Yes - but a pleasant change. Our Sea Service models are so heavy on the trigger you need to jam the muzzle in a man's stomach to be sure of hitting him. But these - just a touch on the trigger.'

Gianna took the pistol Jackson had loaded.

'Careful,' Ramage warned.

She looked at him scornfully, lifted her skirts and scrambled on to the carronade.

'Look, you see that bit of weed? I'll hit it! You'll wager me?'

'One cestesimo.'

'More. Two - hurry!'

Without waiting for a reply she cocked the pistol and fired. The shot sent up a tiny spurt of water several feet beyond the piece of floating weed.

"The ship moved!'

'You didn't allow for the roll!'

'It's not fair. I do not pay. Let's have a proper match. You and your knife and me with this pistol.'

'Match or duel?' Ramage asked wryly.

'Match - to begin with.'

'Be careful, Nico,' warned Antonio. 'Don't forget her mother wanted a son and brought her up as a boy! She shoots like a hunter, rides like a jockey and gambles like a fool!'

Gianna gave a mock curtsy from atop the carronade. 'Thank you, cousin Antionio. You see, Nico how close are the family ties among Italians!'

'Tell me, Nico,' interrupted Antonio, 'surely throwing a knife isn't part of a sailor's training?'

Ramage laughed. 'No - that's Italian training! When my parents lived in Italy - they did for a few years - we had a Sicilian coachman. He taught me.'

'Come on,' Gianna exclaimed impatiently. 'Jackson will throw something into the sea and I hit it at the count of ten. You, Nico,' she looked round 'you have to hit the mast with your knife while standing by that steering stick thing.'

'The tiller.'

'Yes, the tiller. That's fair, I think. And the stakes?'

'Un cestesimo.'

'You are a gambler. Can't you afford more?'

'I'm only a poor lieutenant, Ma'am!'

'You can afford more, though.'

Although her voice was still bantering he knew she was not joking. He looked puzzled and she pointed to his left hand. When he lifted it she indicated the gold signet ring with the rampant griffin crest on his little finger.

'All right, then,' he said reluctantly, 'my signet ring against—'

Still holding the pistol, she had turned her right hand just enough to let him see the heavy gold ring she was wearing on the middle finger.

'—against the ring you are wearing.'

'Oh no!' she exclaimed. 'That's not fair!'

He knew her too well. 'That or no match.'

Shrugging her shoulders with apparent ill grace she said, 'Very well. But if you win the first time you give me another chance.'

Ramage was just going to refuse when he realized her subtlety: if she lost and then won, they could exchange rings without anyone knowing. It was childish but he felt elated: their secret was a secret yet they took pleasure in almost flaunting it.

'All right, but Antonio must hold the stakes,' he said, pulling off his signet ring. He turned to call for Jackson and saw he and Southwick were standing near by, Southwick holding a small wooden cask.

'This do as a target, sir?'

'If it's half full of water, yes.'

'It's empty, sir.'

'So it floats high in the water, eh? Has the Marchesa bribed you?'

'Deck there! Deck there!'

The shout from aloft suddenly reminded them that for the last fifteen minutes everyone except the lookout and the two men at the helm had forgotten the Kathleen was a ship of war.

'Deck here,' bellowed Southwick.

There's a hulk or summat - maybe a small island - fine on the starboard bow, sir.'

'What d'you mean, a hulk?'

'Well, sir, no masts nor nothin', yet looks like a hull. S'just lifting over the horizing, sir.'

Southwick handed his telescope to Jackson. 'Here, get aloft with this bring-'em-near and see what you make of it.'

This aspect of commanding a ship annoyed Ramage: a few weeks ago when he was junior lieutenant in a frigate he'd have been up the ratlines in a moment, having a look for himself. Now, as captain of the tiny Kathleen but with the same powers of life and death over his crew as the captain of a great three-decker, he had to maintain an appearance of calm detachment - at least, he thought ruefully, he would if Gianna was not on board, cheerfully turning a dull voyage into a fete.

The lanky, sandy-haired American ran up the ratlines as effortlessly as if hauled up by an invisible halyard. Once astride the cro'jack yard he paused to pull out the tubes of the telescope and then looked in the direction the lookout was pointing.

Henry Southwick, whose cherubic face and flowing white hair gave him the appearance of a benevolent parson, would celebrate his sixtieth birthday in a few weeks' time, a fact he remembered as he glanced at Ramage. Although the young captain was a year or two over a third of his age and they'd served together for little more than five weeks, Southwick sensed that given a long war and that Ramage survived the intrigues of his father's enemies and the efforts of the French and Spanish, every man that ever sailed with Mr. Ramage would spend his dotage boasting about it to his grandchildren, and Southwick admitted he'd be no exception. Young captains usually annoyed him. He'd served under too many who had been given commands because their fathers owned enough cash and countryside to ensure their own nominees were elected to Parliament. All too often, when grumbling about the blatant inexperience of some young puppy in command, he'd met with the reply, 'Well, his father's worth a couple of votes to the Government.' (What's the ratio of pastureland to patronage? he wondered sourly.) Anyway, none of that could be said about Mr. Ramage, since the Government had tried to get his father shot, like poor old Admiral Byng.

Southwick saw Ramage was blinking again, as though looking at a bright light, and rubbing the scar over his right brow. Although recognizing the warning signal, Southwick wondered what had caused it and, glancing at the Marchesa, saw she too had noticed and was watching with anxiety and affection in her face.

A well-matched pair, he thought, and he could well understand her love (although he was sure Mr. Ramage was quite unaware of the depth of it). Sentimentally, picturing the Marchesa as his daughter, the old Master tried to see Ramage through her eyes. He had that classical build like the Greek statues he'd seen in the Morea, with wide shoulders and slim hips, light on his feet and the kind of walk that'd betrayed him as a man born to lead, even if he was dressed in rags. But as far as Southwick was concerned the eyes revealed most: dark brown, deep set over high cheekbones and slung under bushy eyebrows (which met in a straight line when he was angry or excited), they could look as cold and dangerous as the muzzles of a pair of pistols. Yet he had a dry, straight-faced sense of humour which the men liked, although Southwick admitted that often he only realized he was having his leg pulled when he noticed the tiny wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. 'Deck there,' hailed Jackson. 'A hulk, for certain.'

'Can y' make out her build?' yelled Southwick, suddenly jerked back into the present.

'Not yet. She's stern on but yawing around.'

Southwick knew it couldn't have been an island - there was no land for miles; but what was a dismasted ship doing out here? Suddenly he remembered the previous afternoon's squall. At first he'd taken it for just another Mediterranean autumn thunderstorm, one of the usual couple a day. But as it approached Mr. Ramage had come on deck, seen it and at once called to him to get every stitch of canvas off the ship, and as Southwick had passed on the order he'd been hard put to keep the surprise and doubt out of his voice. But Mr. Ramage had been right; three minutes after the last gasket had been tied, securing the furled sails and leaving the ship rolling in a near calm, a seemingly solid wall of wind had hit the Kathleen and, with only the mast, spars, furled sails and hull to get leverage on, heeled her right over until water poured in at the gun and oar ports, and it had taken extra men at the tiller to get her to bear away under bare poles.

Southwick had expected her to capsize and knew he'd never fathom how Mr. Ramage guessed there was so much wind in that particular thunderstorm. It'd seemed no larger and its clouds were no blacker than any of the others. But a ship whose captain hadn't known - well, even if she hadn't capsized, her masts would have certainly gone by the board.

He looked at Ramage and as their eyes met he knew the lieutenant had worked all that out even before Jackson had started up the ratlines.

'One of ours, sir?'

'I doubt it; not in this position.*

With that Ramage went below to use the desk in his own cabin, ducking his head under the beams and acknowledging the sentry's salute. Even with his neck bent he could not stand upright, although it hardly mattered since the cabin was too small to walk around. And at the moment there could be no mistaking it was temporarily the quarters of a young woman accustomed to having several servants running around after her: flimsy and intimate silk garments edged with delicate lace were strewn on the desk, others tossed into the cot. As he lifted several from the desk he saw one still held the shape of Gianna's body; she must have flung it off when she changed for lunch. Quite deliberately Ramage pictured the naked Eve carved by Ghiberti on the east doors of the Baptistry in Florence - an Eve for whom Gianna might have been the model: the same small, slim, bold body; the same small, bold breasts, flat belly ... He swept the clothes aside, unlocked the second drawer and took out a thick book with a mottled brown cover labelled Signal Book for Ships of War.

Towards the end he found some handwriting on pages left clear of print which listed the numbers and positions of the various rendezvous for ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. He noted the latitude and longitude of the nearest, Number Eleven, and pulled a chart from the rack above the desk. The rendezvous was seventy-five miles to the eastward of the Kathleen's present position - and with the wind they'd been having it ruled out any chance the dismasted ship was a British frigate waiting like a sentry at the rendezvous with fresh orders or information for ships ordered to call there.

He put a finger on the chart. The Kathleen was here, about a hundred miles due west of the southern tip of Sardinia, because he was going well south to skirt the African coast, at the same time giving a wide berth to Majorca, Minorca and the south-eastern corner of Spain. The ship ahead was much too far north to be British and bound from Naples, Malta or the Levant to Gibraltar. He glanced at the top of the chart. Toulon - yes, a French ship from the eastward and bound for the great naval base could be here. But he saw Barcelona to the west and, farther south, Cartagena, were also possible destinations for Spanish warships whose captains would be anxious to keep to the northward because of the shoals and unpredictable currents along the low-lying African coast. A ship returning after rounding Corsica and Sardinia (as he knew several Spanish ships had done recently watching for the British Fleet) might also be here.

He heard Jackson shouting from aloft but could not make out the words, and after replacing the chart and locking up the Signal Book, turned to leave the cabin just as Southwick came down the companionway.

'Jackson says she's a frigate sir,' the Master explained, following Ramage up the ladder. 'Swept clean and not a stick set as a jury rig. Says she looks Spanish built'

'Very well, Mr. Southwick: continue heading up towards her until we can be sure.'

Gianna and Antonio both looked excited as they walked over to meet him. 'If she's Spanish, we can pull her to Gibraltar,' Antonio said.

Ramage shook his head. 'There'll be no towing, unless she's British.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Gianna. 'Why not?'

'I—'

'Deck there!' hailed Jackson. 'She's definitely Spanish built.'

Southwick acknowledged the hail and Ramage turned away to avoid answering Gianna's question, but she repeated it.

'Because, madam,' Ramage said heavily, 'We have a ship's company of sixty-three and we carry ten carronades, each of which fire a 6-pound shot for less than five hundred yards. If that ship over there is a Spanish frigate, she has about two hundred and fifty men on board, and probably soldiers as well, and carries at least thirty-six guns which fire a 12-pound shot for fifteen hundred yards. Any one of those shot could cripple us - they're more than four and a half inches in diameter - and if we were hit on the waterline by a couple of them we'd sink.'

Antonio stuck an arm out sideways. 'But don't their guns point out at right angles, like ours? Surely they can't shoot straight ahead or behind?'

'Yes, they're broadside guns, and we could keep out of their arc of fire. But they could use their bow and stern chasers.'

Antonio looked puzzled.

'Most ships have two special ports aft and two forward. You just haul round a couple of broadside guns and aim 'em through the ports,' he explained, gesturing aft. 'That's what those two ports are for.'

'But can't we risk being shot at by just two guns?' Antonio persisted. 'After all, they'll be rolling, and without sails they can't swing the ship round to aim a broadside, can they?'

'No, but even if she had no guns, how can we possibly capture two hundred and fifty men who'd strongly object to us boarding the ship, let alone take them prisoner?'

'Well, if they haven't any guns,' interrupted Gianna triumphantly, 'why can't we just keep shooting at them until they surrender?'

'I didn't say they haven't any guns,' Ramage said, fighting to conceal his exasperation. 'I simply said "If they hadn't" - but they have.'

'Oh well, it's a pity. We should cut a fine figure towing that big ship into Gibraltar.'

'If you can imagine a little donkey pulling a large cart loaded with blocks of Carrara marble all the way over the Alps, that's about how we'd be towing that. She displaces - if you put her on the scales you'd find she weighs about 1,300 tons against our 160 tons.'

'Less the weight of her masts!' Antonio exclaimed.

'Masts, spars, bowsprit, jibboom, rigging, blocks, sails and boats. Yes,' Ramage conceded ironically, 'you can deduct about a hundred tons - a little less than the weight of the Kathleen.

Southwick called. 'You can just see her now, sir.'

Ramage spotted the small black shape just beginning to rise over the curvature of the earth as the Kathleen approached, and pointed her out to Gianna. The frigate was about eleven miles away. He glanced astern at the cutter's wake; she was making between five and six knots, so it would be nearly two hours before they'd be within gunshot. Close enough, rather, to make out her name.

He wondered afterwards why he corrected himself and why he went below and changed from his best uniform into an older one that bright sun, salt spray and his steward's constant spongings and brushings had reduced to the pleasantly faded blue that he preferred to the original colour.