Ramage and the Renegades

CHAPTER TEN

As the Calypso stretched southwards towards the invisible lines round the globe marking the Tropics and the Equator, Ramage was surprised to see how many ships were at sea. While tacking across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay from Ushant to the Spanish Cabo Finisterre, still marked on the British charts by the French spelling, it had been easy to guess the ports for which merchant ships had been bound.

Few made for Brest because it was primarily a naval port but several were probably heading for the mouth of the Seine with a following wind, hoping to catch the first of the flood to take them up to Honfleur and Rouen. Three outward bound had obviously left Bordeaux and were working their way out of the Bay with a steady westerly wind in several long tacks.

As the Calypso sailed down the Spanish and Portuguese coast, just in sight of the high land, they could tick off the ports simply by watching the sails of ships arriving and departing: Vigo and Oporto had been followed by an increase in numbers as they approached Lisbon and the wide but treacherous entrance to the Tagus. Many ships passed inshore as the land trended away to the eastward, curving round from Cape St Vincent to Lagos, the Rio Tinto, Cadiz, Cape Trafalgar and sharply to the Strait of Gibraltar.

'Amazing,' Southwick commented as he replaced his old but carefully preserved quadrant in its brass-cornered mahogany box. 'Half a dozen ships always in sight. In the war - surprising how long ago that seems now: all of three months, I suppose - one passed a convoy of a hundred ships, and then saw nothing for a couple of weeks. Now, the same number of ships sailing independently means you're likely to see seven a day in the Atlantic. Many more along the coasts, of course.'

For young officers like Kenton, Martin and Orsini, Ramage's deliberate tack in towards Lisbon and the Tagus had given them not only their first sight of the Portuguese capital - a view which might come in very useful in future because, as Southwick commented, one look is worth two charts - but their first look at local coasting craft.

Martin had at once compared the graceful fregatas with Thames barges, and was soon in an argument about them with Kenton and Paolo. Both types of vessel were built for the same function - to carry bulky cargoes up rivers and for short distances along the coasts. The fregatas had apple-cheeked bows and were gaily painted, often with an ancient eye painted on each side. The mast was stepped well forward but raked aft at a considerable angle like a hurricane-swept tree so that the masthead was over the cargo hatch. Nor was this a coincidence - a heavy tackle at the masthead made it easy to use the mast to hoist up the cargo, and another tackle hauled it over the side and on to the quay. The sails were loose footed and limited in size. The Thames barge, Kenton was quick to point out, was just a large box: it had none of the graceful curves of the fregata.

The practical Martin asked the obvious question: given a vessel of, say, eighty feet in length, what did you want: beauty or cargo space? It was almost impossible, he declared, to have both. With her flat bottom, straight sides, bluff bow and almost vertical stern, a Thames barge could use every possible inch for cargo. She hoisted the head of her great mainsail up the mast, and then extended the other corner with a long sprit, so that for a given length of vessel, a Thames barge could set half as much again more canvas than a fregata. And with her flat bottom, the keel in effect on the inside of the hull, she could carry a cargo up the River Crouch, the Medway, the Colne, Orwell, Yare - not to mention the Thames and the Rother and dozens of places in the Solent - and dry out to sit on the bottom when the tide left. That often meant, said Martin triumphantly, that the cargo could be unloaded directly into carts because the horses could come over the sand.

'Or get stuck in the mud,' Kenton said, waving aside Orsini's claims for the polacca of the Mediterranean. The argument was stopped when Southwick pointed out that not one of their noon sights agreed with another. 'According to Mr Kenton we must have made one great sternboard since noon yesterday. because he puts us so far north; Mr Martin would have us believe we've been making seventeen knots for the past twenty-four hours; and Mr Orsini must be teasing us.'

Gradually the latitude and longitude columns in Ramage's journal began to change radically. The longitude started off from a few minutes of arc east of Greenwich, because the Calypso had sailed from the Medway, crossing the meridian while passing westward just south of Newhaven and Rottingdean. Since then the longitude had increased as they slanted southwest while the latitude grew less. Thirty-six degrees North showed they were level with the Strait of Gibraltar; thirty-five meant they were almost as far south as Rabat and bearing away to the southwest for Madeira, having completely failed to find the northeast trades which should have hurried the Calypso down the Portuguese coast.

And at last it was getting wanner. For the time being the sun was brighter rather than hotter, but the sea was certainly not so cold and Ramage slept with the skylights propped open.

Ramage enjoyed and relived his own first voyage into the Tropics by seeing it through the eyes of Wilkins. The present voyage must be the fifth or sixth that would take him across that magic latitude, twenty-three degrees thirty-three minutes, which marked the Tropic of Cancer, the northern limit of the band circling the earth like a cummerbund and called the 'Tropics'.

Wilkins, his blond hair blowing in the trade winds, his blue eyes rarely still for a moment, was looking at the flowing waves, the sky dappled by trade wind clouds, the Calypso's sail, her deck, the movement of the men.

His first attempt to paint on deck had been disastrous: he was just settling down with brushes and palette, having drawn in with a few swift charcoal strokes the curve of the mainsail, when the combination of a lurch to leeward and a sudden puff of wind caught his canvas. The wooden frame of the stretcher hooked in his easel as it blew away and in a moment both had gone over the side, leaving a startled Wilkins still sitting on his folding stool, brush in one hand and the palette and more brushes in the other.

Ramage had run to the ship's side and seen that the easel, heavy with metal fittings, had sunk. To his surprise the seamen who had seen the accident were even more upset than Wilkins. Instead of laughing at the sight of the artist sitting on his stool apparently working on an invisible canvas, they had offered to get some more canvas from the sailmaker. Then, catching Ramage's eye and correctly interpreting the nod, the Calypso's carpenter had gone up to Wilkins and asked for a sketch of an easel with dimensions, promising a replacement by the evening in bare wood, but tomorrow evening with two coats of varnish.

While he waited for the carpenter and his mates to produce a new easel, Wilkins talked to Ramage of his plans.

'The amazing thing is,' he said, 'that in the last few days my entire world has changed. For the whole of my life the sea has been various shades of green, even though poets insist on calling it blue. The sky has been a pale blue, as weak in colour as the shell of a duck's egg.

'Now, as we've come south and into this good weather, just look: the sea is adeep blue, the sky an exciting blue, the trade wind clouds are just the funny shapes you predicted.'

Ramage had earlier tried to describe the day's routine at sea in the Tropics but Wilkins, looking at the Channel off Ushant, had not really believed him. The day, Ramage had predicted, would begin with dawn revealing a band of cloud on the eastern horizon which, as the sun was behind it, would be menacing. Then, as the sun climbed higher the band would disappear and the sky clear.

By nine or ten o'clock, there would be an occasional tiny cloud, like white blanket fluff; within half an hour more would be gradually forming into narrow columns, like marching men, and all borne westward by the trade wind, which would be increasing as the sun rose. Although it was an optical illusion the clouds would seem to be converging on a single point on the western horizon, and each would be changing shape until the underside was flat but the upper part would turn into a strange shape. To Ramage and to Wilkins when he first saw them they looked like the white alabaster effigies he had seen on tombs: a recumbent knight in armour, feet sticking up at one end, head complete with visor, at the other. There might be one which clearly represented a woman. Then Wilkins was spotting faces: just the profile staring up into the sky as though its owner was lying flat on an invisible bed.

The first real day of trade wind clouds had Wilkins, the botanist Garret and Ramage vying with each other to spot and then identify the faces of well-known figures. Wilkins swore he could see the head of Sir William Beechey, the artist, but both Ramage and Garret protested they did not know what he looked like. They all agreed on the Prince Regent, followed ten minutes later by the bloated face of Dundas. Neither Ramage nor Wilkins could give a verdict on Garret's recognition of Arthur Young, the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, but all three soon spotted Evan Nepean, the Secretary to the Board of Admiralty.

A delighted Wilkins then spotted Southwick's profile and the master, made to hurry on deck, claimed the cloud flattered him.

Wilkins, continuing his survey of the voyage so far through an artist's eyes, had one complaint. 'You say the sea and sky will get much more blue before we reach our destination, but who in England will believe me if I paint what I see now? I hadn't realized how few of my fellow artists ever travelled south of Rome - and many, like me, haven't been able to set foot on the Continent yet because of the war. I have seen many paintings of subjects like a "Frigate action off Martinique", or "The Battle of the Saints" - they are islands nearby, are they not? The sea and the sky look like the Channel or North Sea: look like the sea should look - or so I thought. Now I realize that those artists had never seen tropical seas and skies; they were painting actions as described by individual captains, who would make sure the naval details were correct - the position of ships, the rigging, and so on. But they never told the artists - or the artists would not believe - the colours. Why, just look at that row of fire buckets - have you ever seen polished leather look so rich in England? The canvas of the sails - white be damned; just look at how much raw umber and burnt sienna there is. I'll show you when I mix some colours.

'Gaudy, my dear sir, that's what the Tropics are, and I love them: colours are beginning to live!'

'For real colour you should see the West Indies,' Ramage said. 'The colour of the sea over a coral reef - light blue that seems alive, or a pale green like silk. The colours of the black women's dresses: they take three pieces of cloth of unbelievable gaudiness, put them on their bodies and on their heads, and seem more fashionable than milady riding in Rotten Row.'

Ramage was sitting at his desk looking through the journals kept by Kenton, Martin and Orsini. They were supposed to be diaries of happenings on board the ship, with navigational facts, descriptions of 'any unusual events' and sketches of any coasts the Calypso passed. Kenton and Martin were, for practical purposes, almost illiterate, and Orsini was lazy. Kenton and Martin had gone to sea at an early age; they could knot and splice, box the compass, load a cannon and fire a musket at an age when most boys on land were still scared of the dark, but they could not parse a sentence and even now would not know what to do with an adverb. Paolo's ruthless tutors at home in Volterra made sure he had a remarkable knowledge of grammar, so he spoke English, French and Spanish fluently, as well as Italian. This was normal for most intelligent aristocrats. Paolo's trouble was sheer laziness and almost anostalgie de la boue for the rougher side of seamanship. He preferred rope-work to navigation; he would sooner paint Stockholm tar on to rigging than study elementary ballistics. He picked up a pen with the same reluctance other men might grasp a smoking grenade.

It was curious how three clever, perceptive young men could fail to see - or, rather, to note - interesting events. A few days ago several whales were sighted, some young ones among them; last Sunday a school of dolphins played under the bow for hours like huge joyful children; on Monday seamen towing a huge hook caught a large shark and the task of killing it after it had been hoisted on board had made the decks run with blood - more blood than had ever flowed in battle. And the next day there had been a tropic bird.

For Ramage there were five things that he would always remember about the West Indies - the Tropics, in fact - even if he never visited them again: tropic birds, flying fish, blue sea, pelicans and palm trees. This tropic bird, the first of the voyage, had come up from the east, alone, passed high over the ship with a casual elegance, and flown on to the west - where the nearest land was nearly three thousand miles away. It was not a big bird but a striking one - all white with a very long forked tail. In fact the tail was three or four times longer than the bird - V-shaped like a swallow's, and very thin, as though each part comprised a single feather.

But there was no mention of whales, shark, dolphins or tropic bird in any of the journals. They were accepted like sunshine and squalls as part of a daily routine. How did one make people aware of their surroundings?

Ramage was just closing the last journal when the sentry at the door called: 'Mr Southwick, sir.'

The master came in, a cheerful grin on his sunburned face, his white hair now greasy because of the water shortage, and put a slip of paper on Ramage's desk. Usually he brought down the slate on which he had written the noon position, and the use of a piece of paper made Ramage look carefully at the figure.

The longitude was of course west of Greenwich and in the thirties, but the latitude stood out as though Southwick had written it in large figures: 9° 58' 12". The Calypso was now south of ten degrees North!

Ramage looked up at the old master and smiled. 'So we've crossed our own personal Equator! Pass the word for Mr Aitken while I find my keys. Time to break the seals!'

By the time the first lieutenant arrived in the cabin, Ramage had unlocked the drawer and taken out the packet with its four seals, each bearing the three anchors symbol of the Admiralty. It was addressed to him and bore the instructions: 'Not to be opened until south of the 10th parallel of latitude.'

It was far more exciting for Aitken and Southwick because Lord St Vincent had already told Ramage the Calypso's final destination although he had been unable to mention it to anyone else.

Ramage slid a paperknife under the seals, levered them up and opened the letter, which comprised two sheets of paper folded into three, the two ends then being folded inwards and a seal applied to each corner of the flaps. In the top right-hand corner was the usual 'By the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty . . .' Then the elegant copperplate opened in the time-honoured way: 'I am directed by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to acquaint you . . .' He continued reading to himself.

'Having resumed command of the Calypso frigate after her refit, and received on board the extra provisions, stores and equipment listed in the margin of the second page, and having received on board the supernumeraries also listed on the second page and'... Ramage stopped: the habit of making a letter one long sentence, a series of statements linked by 'and' and 'whereas' was both confusing and tiring to read. Very well, now the Calypso is south of ten degrees North and the orders are opened.

You will make the best of your way to the Ilha da Trinidade situate to the best of our knowledge in 20° 29' South latitude and 29° 20' West longitude, or thereabouts, and upon arriving there you will take possession of the island in the King's name and erect plaques permanently recording the fact and recording your name and that of the ship and the date.

You will then cause the island to be surveyed and mapped, with particular concern for the watering places, and any sheltered bays suitable for use as anchorages should be sounded and proper charts drawn.

If wells are necessary they should be bored and lined with brick by the masons you carry; the botanist should choose and mark suitable land for the planting of maize. Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. This land should be cleared, dug. prepared and sown under his instructions.

The surveyors, with the Marine officer, should pay particular attention to siting batteries to cover the main anchorages and the watering places, and these batteries should be built as expeditiously as possible. Appropriate magazines and kitchens should also be built.

He glanced up at Aitken and Southwick, both of whom were controlling their impatience. He resumed reading to himself.

If the island proves suitable, a signal station should be established which will also serve as a lookout tower, permitting an all-round view.

Having surveyed the island and its anchorages, provided it with batteries and a signal station, ensured a ready supply of water and planted the crops you are carrying, and having taken possession of the island in the King's name and leaving a Union flag flying at the signal station or lookout tower, you will return with your ship to the United Kingdom and report to their Lordships in detail and without delay upon your proceedings.

No surprises then, simply more details. Ramage turned to Southwick and, with a straight face said: 'Well, you take us to twenty degrees, twenty-nine minutes South, and twenty-nine degrees, twenty minutes West, and anchor as convenient.'

'Do I, by Jove,' Southwick said, his brow wrinkled as he worked out the position. 'Fernando de Noronha? No, too far south. It's about a thousand miles east of Rio de Janeiro, isn't it, sir? It'll be rather deep for anchoring...'

Aitken's eyes were shut as he searched his memory and looked at an imaginary chart. St Paul Rocks.. .no, they were north of Fernando de Noronha. Twenty south - that must be about the same as Rio de Janeiro - ah!' Abrolhos Rocks!' he said triumphantly; they were a hundred miles or so off the Brazilian coast.

Ramage shook his head.

'Martin Vaz island!' Southwick exclaimed. 'Although how we'll find it I don't know; enough people have looked.'

Again Ramage shook his head and told a crestfallen Southwick: 'You are close. Ilha da Trinidade, which is nearby.'

Southwick sniffed and Ramage recognized the sound as expressing the master's contempt. 'How big is it?'

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'Big enough to show on a chart; small enough, I suspect, to miss on a hazy day. I trust our chronometer is behaving itself.'

'It didn't like those couple of months in England any more than I did,' Southwick grumbled. 'My rheumatism was playing up, and so was the chronometer.'

'Might one ask why we . . .?' Aitken ventured, tactfully tapering off the sentence.

'No one can leave the ship before we arrive, so there's no reason why the pair of you don't read my orders,' Ramage said, sliding them across the desk to the first lieutenant.

Aitken was halfway down the first page when he said: 'We claim it? Who owns it now?'

'Let Southwick read it, then we can go over the questions together.'

Aitken finished the first page and then ticked off the items listed on the second page. He knew all about them, and his curiosity why one of the King's ships should be carrying bricks, plasterers' tools, spades, rakes and hoes, sacks of seed potatoes and grain as well as surveying equipment was now satisfied.

Southwick read, folded the orders and gave them back to Ramage. 'Whatever it is,' he said slowly, 'don't let's forget that the Ilha da Trinidade lies beyond the Doldrums ... At this time of the year we could take weeks to cross them.'

'The Spanish aren't very original about names, are they?' Aitken complained. 'There's the big island of Trinidad at the entrance to the Caribbean, a city in Cuba and I seem to remember seeing a reference to another island with that name off Bahia Blanca, three hundred miles or so south of Buenos Aires."

'There'll be more,' Southwick commented. 'It's like Santa Cruz. When in doubt the Dons call a place either Santa Cruz or Trinidad.'

'This one was named by the Portuguese,' Ramage said.

Southwick sniffed again. 'Not much difference, except the language. Maybe the Portuguese are better sailors.' He thought for a few moments and then amended his remark. 'They were, a couple of centuries ago, but not now. But if they named the island I presume they own it.'

'I've no idea what the legal position is except that Trinidade is not mentioned in Bonaparte's treaty. Nor are many other islands, I suppose, but Trinidade is the one that interests their Lordships. Anyway, we are to take possession and plant. The potatoes and grain will run wild, but they'll seed so that in an emergency a visiting ship will find something. If it looks a promising place it might even become a minor Ascension.'

'But anyone could seize it after we've gone, sir!' Southwick protested.

'Orders,' Ramage said. 'We obey them. I could think of worse. It's a cruise, really. But I imagine that if I return and report that Trinidade will make a good base, their Lordships - the government anyway - will send a garrison. If the batteries are built by us. a passing John Company ship on her way to India could land the guns and gunners and a battalion of infantry.'

Aitken asked, 'Do the government think of this island as a place for the Honourable East India Company ships to call for water in an emergency?'

'I don't really know,' Ramage admitted. 'It's rather far to the west for ships bound to and from the Cape of Good Hope and India. More likely their Lordships have in mind a wooding-and-watering island which a British squadron covering the South American coast could use. Somewhere they can refit, get fresh vegetables, land any sick . . . Seven hundred and fifty miles southwest to Rio, six hundred and fifty miles northwest to Bahia, and just over fifteen hundred to the mouth of the Plate.'

'And two thousand across to the West African coast,' Southwick said. 'This place begins to sound interesting. But why has no one garrisoned it before? After all, it sits astride the South Atlantic like a jockey on a nag.'

'Well, the Spanish and Portuguese don't need it because they share all the ports from one end of South America to the other,' Ramage pointed out. 'The French are really only concerned with the West Indies and India, and anyway the Dons are their allies so they can always use places like Rio - even though it is Portuguese - and the Plate for provisioning and watering. Only Britain needs bases to attack South America and cover the route to the Cape and India.'

'How big is it? How high, rather?' Southwick asked.

'No one was very sure at the Admiralty, but as far as I could discover it's roughly a couple of miles long in a northwest, southeast direction, a mile wide and with hills in the middle a thousand feet high.'

'A thousand feet, sir? We can rely on that?'

'We can't rely on anything. Mr Dalrymple at the Hydrographic Office admitted he knew nothing much about it - he just warned me not to hit Martin Vaz, which is either a tiny island or a reef of rocks a day's sailing from it.'

'Once we're through the Doldrums, we'll get a lift to the westward from the current,' Southwick commented. 'But just think of it, once we make a landfall we go on shore to plant potatoes ... I hate gardening,' he admitted, 'but it'll make a change to carry a spade and not a sword!'

The Doldrums had been empty days when the Calypso sat dead on the water, the heat haze merging sea, horizon and sky into what seemed to Wilkins a pool of molten copper. It was a time when he wanted to paint, wanted to capture on canvas the sense of the empty vastness of the ocean when there was no wind, where the sails were furled on the yards because there was no point in leaving them chafing against masts and rigging with every movement of the ship. Some days there was a slight swell, and Captain Ramage said it was caused by some distant storm, probably several thousands of miles away. He wanted to put it on canvas, but the sun was too hot. Even under the awning stretched across the quarterdeck it was an oven which sapped everyone's energy. Tempers were fraying and the sentry on the scuttlebutt watched closely as a man dropped in the dipper and took a drink.

The sheer stark simplicity of the life fascinated Wilkins. The intense heat, the lack of wind, and the fact that the Calypso was taking twice as long as expected to get through the Doldrums meant the men were twice as thirsty but had only half the water. It was interesting that the men had a basic ration, but in addition some extra was put into a butt each day and this was left by the mainmast with a Marine sentry guarding it.

And there was a dipper, a cylindrical, open-topped container, the diameter of a broom handle and about four inches long. There was a hole on each side of the top through which the line threaded, and a man was allowed to drop the dipper down through the bunghole and draw out as much water as it would hold. But because when there was a water shortage the butt was stowed on its side with chocks, the dipper usually tilted before it could fill completely. And the Marine sentry made sure that it was 'one man, one dip'.

Still, Wilkins had made up his mind about the colours, sketched in the outlines on the canvas with charcoal, and was ready when the first teasing but cooling puffs of wind had come. First of all there had been an excited hail from a lookout at the masthead - a man perched in what looked like an open-sided tent with strips of canvas to protect him from the rays of the sun. 'Wind shadow on the larboard quarter!' he had shouted. A couple of minutes later he reported it was approaching, but, just as suddenly, it vanished. Five minutes later another, also on the larboard quarter, reached the ship, a wind shadow that danced across the surface of the sea like a swarm of gnats on the edge of a pond. Suddenly they all had a teasing breath of cool air, but then it was gone.

Yet Mr Ramage was quite confident the wind would set in: topmen swarmed aloft to drop the sails - 'let fall', rather. And by then more wind shadows were being reported, the men becoming excited, and he was hurriedly mixing paints on his palette, the sudden breeze blowing away the lethargy. Now they were at last in the southeast trade winds which Southwick said started off down towards the Cape of Good Hope.

Crossing the Equator a few days later was best forgotten as far as Wilkins was concerned: Neptune had dozens of victims because the Calypso had spent most of her time in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, and few men had crossed the Line. So the unlucky ones were given stiff 'tonics' of soap and water, shaved, ducked and five men, who had objected violently, were ordered by King Neptune to be tarred and feathered. Three others had their faces and backsides given a liberal coating of black gun lacquer.

Wilkins found it hard to get used to the sun's position. It was sufficiently late in the year and they were far enough south for the sun to be almost vertically overhead, so his shadow at noon was tiny, extending only a few inches from his feet, as though he was standing in a small puddle. Flying fish skimming just above the waves like great dragonflies had been commonplace for a long time and although the Calypso was now almost midway between West Africa and South America, he was surprised by how many sea birds they saw. He had painted some of them, putting the date and position on the back of the canvas. He enjoyed painting birds in flight because it gave him good practice at painting the sea - surely the most challenging of all subjects. It was never the same, varying with the wind, cloud, sun, or rain, and, according to the captain, with the depth of the ocean and the latitude. At Trinidade, their destination, the captain promised that if there were reefs, he would see three or four different colours in as many hundreds of yards. For the moment, though, everyone was relieved that they were now in the southeast trades.

Now Southwick, legs astride and balancing himself against the gentle roll, flipped down one more shade of his quadrant because he found the sun bright, once again 'brought the sun down to the horizon', rocked the quadrant slightly to make sure that the lower edge of the sun was precisely on the horizon, made a slight adjustment and a moment later saw the sun had moved. He read the figures on the ivory scale of the quadrant. The ritual of the noon sight was, as far as the sun was concerned, now over: he had measured the highest angle that it made with the horizon, and that was that: only the angle mattered, not the time: if he had measured its highest angle, then that was the angle at noon local time, and he did not have to bother to turn a half-minute glass, bellow at Orsini to note the chronometer . . . Now he had to apply some corrections, add or subtract figures from the almanac, and the answer would be the Calypso's latitude. It was the simplest thing to do in celestial navigation; it was how the navigators from the oldest times crossed oceans - they knew the latitude of their destination and sailed along it until they arrived. The only danger was running into the land at night. Longitude was a different problem; without an accurate chronometer there was no way of being sure of one's exact distance east or west of the Greenwich meridian.

Young Orsini was working out his answer using the top of the binnacle box. Kenton and Martin were sitting on the breeches of guns. Southwick could see Mr Ramage walking up and down on the windward side of the quarterdeck, having his spell of exercise before his meal. And waiting to hear the latitude ... Normally Mr Ramage left the navigation to him, but for the last three days he had been taking a close interest. The reason was not hard to guess - the Calypso's latitude and longitude were almost the same as the figures they had been given for Trinidade.

In fact, according to Southwick's reckoning, they were within a hundred miles of it. Allowing for the chronometerbeing a bit out, he was sure that putting the point of a pair of compasses down on Trinidade and drawing a circle with a radius of fifty miles would enclose the Calypso, but therewas a high haze, so it was impossible to guess whether they could see ten miles or sixty.

This was always the difficult time when making a landfall: did one set more canvas to increase speed in the hope of sighting land before nightfall, or go slowly and cautiously and hope to sight it at dawn? Martin Vaz should be on the larboard bow and Trinidade dead ahead. If one left Martin Vaz too far to larboard - thus making absolutely certain of not hitting it - there was a risk of passing Trinidade out of sight to larboard. The life of a master in the Royal Navy, Southwick thought to himself, could be summed up by that situation: trying to find one rock in the middle of an ocean without hitting another . . .

He wrote the final row of figures, 20° 01' 50". And that, he knew without looking it up, was within thirty miles of the latitude of Trinidade.

A cast of the log half an hour ago had given just over six knots and they were able to lay the course. By five o'clock they might be there; it should be in sight at the latest in an hour or two - if it was as high as reported and the chronometer was anywhere near passing for correct.

Southwick walked across the quarterdeck and reported to Ramage, who grimaced and nodded ahead. 'A thousand or fifteen hundred feet high? We should be seeing it by now.'

'It's hazier than it looks, sir,' Southwick said confidently. 'Had you given any thought about who might ...'

'All right, all right, pass the word through the bosun. Though why I should always pay up a guinea to the first man to sight such a place, I don't know!'

'It's the trickiest landfall we've ever made, sir. The Atlantic is 2,500 miles wide here, from Trinidade to the nearest tip of West Africa, and we're looking for somewhere two or three miles long.'

'That's a fine argument to impress old ladies,' Ramage said unsympathetically, 'and it'd impress me if I thought Trinidade could lie anywhere along that gap of 2,500 miles. But you have a quadrant, almanac, tables and a chronometer that allow you to be rather more precise.'

'Well, yes sir,' Southwick agreed and added with a grin, 'but I can't make it seem too easy!'

He walked back to the binnacle to inspect the calculations made by the two young lieutenants and midshipman.

He looked first at Orsini's slate and his brow furrowed. 'I can assure you, Mr Orsini, that the Calypso is about seven hundred and fifty miles from Rio de Janeiro; in other words, about four-fifths of the way across the South Atlantic between the Cape of Good Hope and South America, not far from the tropic of Capricorn. But you, Mr Orsini, seem to be not only north of the Equator, almost on the far side of the Torrid Zone, but close to the Cape Verde Islands, which the rest of us left thousands of miles away some weeks ago...'

Orsini, his face crimson, hurriedly rubbed out some writing on his slate and corrected it. 'The latitude is north, not south. I'm sorry, I mean, I should have named it south, not north.'

Southwick grumbled and picked up Martin's slate. He put it down again. 'Lieutenant Martin has made a mathematical discovery of note: three and two make four. Well, the rest of us will continue to struggle along with five. And Mr Kenton? Ah, the method of calculation is correct, but the original altitude is wrong. Check your sextant, Mr Kenton; I suspect you have knocked it and it now has an error.'

Ramage had listened to this daily routine for weeks and it varied little: Orsini made some enormous mistake that was due to lack of interest in mathematics; Martin made some silly mistake; and Kenton worked out the sight correctly but had been careless with his sextant. It was almost new, and one of the few sextants on board: Southwick and Aitken used quadrants.

Yet Southwick was right to keep nagging these young officers. One of them might be in command of a prize one day when war broke out again and responsible for navigating her thousands of miles to port, or even to a rendezvous at a place like Trinidade . . .

The lookout's hail came at exactly three o'clock in the afternoon; his shout was partly drowned as six bells was being struck.

There was, he called, what might be only a cloud on the horizon but it was a different shape from the trade wind clouds and seemed to be lying athwart their course.

An excited Orsini asked 'May I, sir?' and, when Ramage nodded, grabbed a telescope and raced up the shrouds, climbing the ratlines as fast as any topman.

He braced himself beside the lookout and glanced ahead as he pulled open the telescope. Low on the horizon there was something the colour of a fading bruise.

He held up the telescope, balancing against the Calypso's roll and focused his eye in the circle of glass. It was land. As the lookout had said, it was athwart the Calypso's course, probably lying northwest and southeast. Low at each end and rising towards the middle. There were some peaks in the centre of the island - he counted four which seemed the same height and a fifth quite a bit lower. It sounded like Trinidade, but where was Martin Vaz Rocks?

'Deck there!' he hailed. 'It's land lying across our course and I can distinguish five peaks in the centre part of the island.'

'How far?' Aitken shouted.

'Difficult to say, sir; there's nothing to use as a scale. Fifteen miles, I reckon; I think haze must have been hiding it, then the wind cleared it away.'

Paolo felt like saying that even at this distance it looked like an island off Tuscany; cliffs with rounded hills just inland. Mr Ramage would understand - but so many islands in the West Indies looked like Tuscany, too, and neither of them wanted to be reminded that it would be months before they were back in England and receiving news of Aunt Gianna.

Down on deck Aitken and Ramage, using the only two other telescopes, sighted the island at the same moment.

'I don't know what happened to Martin Vaz,' Ramage said, 'but that must be Trinidade. We'll pass round the southern end to the lee side, so that we can run down the west coast.'

'Supposing we don't find an anchorage, sir?'

'Then we'll be wasting our time, because the whole reason for taking the island will be gone.'

What Ramage did not say was that he had been thinking a great deal about that very point, which was not covered by his orders. He knew that the Admiralty's only interest in Trinidade was as a base, and a base meant a safe bay in which ships could anchor, and with fresh water available on shore, from a river or wells. It had not occurred to their Lordships that there might be neither, although, to be fair, many ships had visited the island in the last hundred years. Presumably if they had found neither anchorage nor water they would have reported the fact: no one looked for either at Martin Vaz.

But supposing . . . Well, he could do one of two things: first he could say: 'This island is no use to anyone' (after having put landing parties on shore to be certain about water) and return to the United Kingdom, calling in at one of the South American ports for water before crossing the Doldrums again. That would mean the Calypso would stay less than a week.

The alternative was to do a survey of the island anyway, plant the vegetables on the basis that although there was no river there was sufficient rain, and make soundings so that their Lordships at least had a record of the island, even if it was no good to them. That would take a couple of months, perhaps longer, and he might return to England to find that their Lordships considered he had wasted their time and his own.

Although Aitken had just raised the point. Ramage had made up his mind three or four weeks ago, when he first thought of the possibilities: he would survey, sound and plant, even if the Calypso could not anchor and had to back and fill in the lee of the island for as long as it took. Two months backing and filling ... if he was more sure of the situation in Rio it would have been worth landing a survey and planting party on the island, leaving them with a couple of boats, and taking the Calypso on a visit to Rio - or even up to Bahia, which was nearer - where he could also provision and water.

As he looked over the quarterdeck rail Ramage saw the surveyors and draughtsmen standing on top of the hammock nettings, eager for a sight of the island that would comprise their world for several weeks. Indeed, the Calypso at the moment looked far removed from a ship of war.

There were ten or eleven of Wilkins's canvases lodged in various places on deck, to help the oil paints to dry, and his new easel was by the mainmast with a canvas clipped to it, so several square yards of deck looked like an artist's studio.

Round the foremast several sacks of Irish potatoes and yams had been emptied out and spread over the deck, and a dozen seamen were patiently sorting them out and throwing away those that had gone rotten or showed signs of mildew. The smell drifted aft, and Ramage was reminded of a country barn. For a moment, as his memory went back to Cornwall, he thought of swallows jinking through shafts of sunlight and shadow.

Already Southwick had assembled a party of foretop and fo'c'slemen to prepare anchors and cables. As soon as the Calypso was clear of the English Channel, her anchor cables had been taken off the anchors and hauled below, to be stowed in the cabletier. The hawsehole, one each side, out of which the cable led when the ship was at anchor, had been blocked first with a hawse plug the size of the hawsehole, and that had been reinforced by a blind buckler, yet another circular wooden disc backed up by iron bars, and ensuring that waves could not force water into the ship.

Now men were driving out the iron bars and then levering out the blind bucklers. The plugs were harder - men had to drive them out with heavy mauls while others, scrambling over the bow, caught them and made sure they did not fall over the side.

Meanwhile men were busy down in the cabletier. a hot and dank part of the ship, where several cables were coiled down but which was always damp because the cables, impregnated with salt (as well as sand and shell scraped off the sea bed and ingrained in the lay of the ropes), never properly dried out. Now they were hauling the end of one up to the hawse and then another. Each end was led round, one to be secured to an anchor on the larboard side, the other to starboard.

Soon Southwick was back on the quarterdeck reporting that the ship was ready for anchoring, and Ramage offering him a telescope to inspect the island. The master was not impressed by what he saw. 'If the other side's like this, then there are no anchorages,' he grumbled. 'All I can see are steep cliffs. Those mountains must be a good fifteen hundred feet - one looks like that big sugarloaf at Rio de Janeiro. I grant they should put the other side in a lee, but a lee's no good without a bay. Nothing for that fellow Wilkins to paint...'

At that moment Ramage saw that 'that fellow Wilkins' was collecting his canvases together and taking them below. He was one of the Calypso's more welcome guests: he had quickly picked up the routine of daily life in a frigate, and quietly went about his painting without asking for special favours. The result was, of course, that he had become popular. He had painted several striking portraits. The first, of Southwick, was one of the best likenesses that Ramage had seen of anyone: looking at the canvas, one half expected Southwick's face to break into a grin. The second one, of young Paolo, had revealed his Italian lineage but in some subtle way merged it into his midshipman's uniform. The next venture had been a large canvas with three seamen sitting on the deck with a sail across their legs, busy stitching. Wilkins had contrived to let the viewer feel he was sitting among the men, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, with the canvas round him. The portrait of Bowen sitting with his head bowed over a chess board made Ramage think that Wilkins had somehow diagnosed something of the surgeon's tragic past, when drink had nearly ruined him, but the painting showed Bowen's victory, not a defeat. And, knowing Southwick's frequent defeats at Bowen's hands while playing chess, Wilkins had painted in the chessmen so that Bowen was trying to find a way out of checkmate.

Within another hour the Calypso was reaching fast and only two or three miles from the southern tip of the island. Aitken came up to Ramage and saluted formally.

'Do you want the men sent to quarters, sir?'

Ramage shook his head and smiled. 'It's a hard habit to break, isn't it! But we're at peace and this is a deserted island, so we'll keep your decks free of sand.'

Ramage thought for a moment and then said: 'Send Jackson to the foremasthead, and Orsini to the main: tell them to watch out for any dark patches in the water that'll warn of rocks. And light patches for reefs, too!'

Aitken passed the order and then Ramage said: 'Have the deep sea lead ready. I hope we don't have to use it. but if we can't anchor on the other side we might as well have some idea of the depth.'

The deep sea lead was a very long line with a heavy lead weight on the end. The lead was taken out to the end of the jibboom and the line led back aft, clear of everything, and then forward again to the forechains, where it was brought back on board. As soon as the word was given the lead was dropped, taking with it line nearly twice the length of the ship. The leadsman and his mates could let more run, but initially more than 300 feet went in a matter of seconds. The usual hand lead was used only for depths of twenty fathoms and less.

Ramage, now holding the only telescope on the quarterdeck, because the other two had been entrusted to Jackson and Orsini, went through all the evolutions the Calypso might need to perform and could rely on Aitken and Southwick remembering the various drills, while Kenton and Martin had enough ingenuity to think of anything unusual.

'Quarterdeck there, foremast here!'

Aitken lifted the speaking-trumpet and answered Jackson.

'Thought I saw a puff of smoke at the southern end, sir, like a bonfire being put out.'

'Can you see smoke now?'

'No, sir, it only lasted a few moments.'

'Keep a sharp lookout,' Aitken said, in the standard response. He turned to Ramage, an eyebrow raised. Jackson was one of the best lookouts and probably the most reliable seaman in the ship.

'Could have been a flock of small birds flying off,' Ramage said. 'I've known the movement being mistaken in the distance for a puff of smoke.'

'Aye, sir. It's hardly the place one would expect to find a gillie roasting a deer!'