Ramage's Diamond

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By eight o'clock next morning the Juno and Surcouf were anchored in the Petite Anse d'Arlet three and a half miles north-west of Diamond Rock. They were a few hundred yards off a beach on which a few tiny but gaily-painted rowing boats were hauled up on the sand, their nets draped over rocks to dry. Ramage saw a few huts beyond the fringe of palm trees but apart from the occasional whiff of a cooking fire there was no sign of life: the people in the tiny village had obviously decided to keep out of sight of the ships that had suddenly arrived in their bay.

To the north-east the high peak of Morne la Plaine separated them from Fort Royal Bay while more peaks trended south to end in Diamond Hill, overlooking the Fours Channel with Diamond Rock beyond.

In the bay the water was so clear that he could see the bottom at fifty feet: from the Juno's bow the cable was visible all the way down to the anchor. There was still a slight offshore breeze but that did nothing to shake Ramage's conviction that it was going to be a scorching hot day with very little wind. These were just the conditions he wanted once the French convoy rounded Pointe des Salines because the merchant ships would have little more than steerage way. On the other hand light airs out in the Atlantic might delay the convoy's arrival for days.

As he walked the starboard side of the quarterdeck he reflected that the Master's log would record that the ship's company was employed 'as the Service required' and Southwick would have nothing to worry about if the Admiral suddenly arrived alongside for an inspection. The decks were scrubbed and the hammocks stowed in the nettings round the top of the bulwarks with the long canvas covers well tucked in. The brasswork had been polished with brickdust and reflected the early sun; the capstan was newly painted after being used to hoist the guns. Men were carrying the grindstone below after putting a fresh edge on cutlasses, tomahawks and pikes.

Two 12-pounders had been shifted over to larboard because the three now on the Diamond had all come from that side. He was still not used to the empty port on the quarterdeck where the 6-pounder that was now the Marchesa battery had once stood.

Short of men and short of guns, Ramage thought gloomily that on paper the Juno was more like a ship about to be paid off after a long commission than a frigate maintaining a close blockade of the most important French port in the West Indies. At least the paintwork gleamed, the rigging was ataunto and the sails in good repair.

He stopped his pacing and onee again trained his telescope on La Créole. Not a flag was flying and none of the men's washing was strung on a line. From where she was now, Wagstafie could see all the way down to Pointe des Salines.

A pelican splashed into the water so close by that it made him jump. He watched it through the port as it raised its great bill, gulping at the fish it caught and then resting. It reminded him of a portly bishop eyeing the port decanter circling the table towards him after a fine dinner.

Southwick came up, mopping his brow with a large and grubby cloth. 'D'you think we might spread the awning, sir? It's so damned hot and we could have it down in five minutes if...'

Ramage closed the telescope with an exasperated snap. 'Yes, by all means. The way things are going, we could give the men a week's shore leave.'

"You mustn't take on so, sir,' Southwick chided. 'You can't expect the French to be on time and anyway the calm may also serve to stop us having to share 'em with the Admiral.’

Ramage stared at him, hardly able to believe his ears.

Southwick grinned almost defiantly and murmured: 'I'm certain I don't want to, and I'm sure you don't really, not if you think about it. Why sir, I can just see the Juno and the Surcouf escorting two brace o' French merchantmen into Bridgetown.'

‘I’ve thought of it,' Ramage admitted, 'but I've tried and failed to think of where we'd find the guards and prize crews.'

Now it was Southwick's turn to stare. 'Why sir, we won't need guards. We can just turn the French prisoners loose on the beach opposite the Diamond and let 'em walk over the mountains to Fort Royal to give the Governor the glad news. Ten of our men can get one of those merchantmen to Barbados, even if it blows a gale of wind.'

Ramage took off his hat and wiped the inside of the brim. 'Let's get the awning up before the pitch melts out of the deck seams.'

Petite Anse d'Arlet was probably one of the loveliest bays in Martinique. At any other time Ramage would have enjoyed spending a few hours anchored there and would have let the men fish or swim over the side. With a few Marines acting as sentries, the bos'n could have taken a party on shore for a wooding expedition: the cook's eternal complaint was that he was short of firewood for the coppers and soon would not be able to produce hot food. It was the regular complaint of every cook in the Navy and not to be taken very seriously, but wooding and watering, even though it meant finding a freshwater stream and rolling the heavy casks along the beach, was always a welcome task for the men and often, for a year at a time, the only chance they had of setting foot on land.

The day wore on slowly. At half past eleven the order 'Clear decks and up spirits' was given and the rum was served out. At noon the men went to dinner. Ramage and Southwick were doing watch and watch about, and both of them were hard pressed not to hail the lookouts from time to time to see if La Créole had hoisted any signals.

The men were still below when an excited hail came: 'Deck there, the schooner has hoisted a French flag!'

Ramage shouted to Jackson to fire a musket shot to alert the Surcouf and ordered a bos'n's mate to pipe 'Man the capstan'. For the moment there was no rush: Wagstaffe's signal meant that he had sighted the French convoy rounding Pointe des Salines and definitely identified it. The French had a good ten miles to sail before they reached the Fours Channel, and Ramage did not want to risk his two frigates being seen by a French frigate which might stay out farther to the west, From now on La Créole's signals would be hoisted for one minute only, single flags whose meanings could be known only to those with copies of the list that Ramage had issued to Aitken, Wagstaffe and the petty officer in command of the Diamond batteries.

Southwick had heard the musket shot but not the lookout's hail. Hurrying up the companionway he inquired anxiously; 'The French or the Admiral, sir?'

'The French,' Ramage said crisply, 'and they're on time, you notice. But we can't be sure yet that the Admiral isn't chasing them round the Pointe. Man the capstan and heave round until we're at long stay. We'll be seeing some more signals from Wagstaffe soon and know what is happening.'

Although Ramage had not ordered the men to quarters - time enough for that on the way down to the Diamond - Jackson had already come up to the quarterdeck, where he would act as quartermaster, responsible for seeing that the men at the wheel carried out Ramage's orders. Now Orsini hurried up the companionway, his dirk round his waist and holding the signal book and a list of the special signals for La Créole. He had his own telescope under his arm and began strutting along the quarterdeck. For a moment Ramage was reminded of grackles at Barbados, the large friendly blackbirds with long, stiff tails. They too strutted and whenever he saw one he always pictured it with a telescope under its wing. The boy has a right to strut, he thought affectionately. Although at sea for only a few weeks, he has already soaked up more seamanship than most youngsters get drummed into them in a year. Orsini had an all-consuming curiosity about ships and the sea and was eager to learn. He was here on board the Juno because he had badgered Gianna into persuading Ramage to take him. Far too many 'younkers' went to sea as captain's servants (an inaccurate description since they were apprentices rather than servants) or midshipmen because their parents decided on it. In many families the eldest son inherited, the second went into the Navy, the third the Army, the fourth the Church, and a fifth was indentured to the East India Company, with high hopes that he would become a nabob and fears he would be hard put to remain a clerk and not fall off his counting house stool. Orsini was there from choice and all the more useful for it.

By now the men were heaving round on the capstan and he glanced across at the Surcouf. She too was heaving in, with Bevins the fiddler perched on the capstan. He was thankful he had spent the previous evening with Aitken and Wagstaffe going over everything he and they could think of. It should save a great deal of signalling. La Créole reports the French in sight by hoisting a Tricolour and whichever of the two frigates spots the signal first fires a musket shot and both frigates heave in to long stay. After that, the Surcouf follows the Juno's movements until they are approaching the Diamond. Then it would be time for the signal book, but both Aitken and Wagstaffe now understood so well what he anticipated would be his tactics that few signals should be needed. There was another hail from aloft. 'Schooner, sir. She's hoisted a single flag.'

Ramage had barely acknowledged the hail before Paolo, telescope to his eye, was calling, 'Number seven, sir. That's Enemy convoy comprises seven merchant ships or transports.'

A big convoy whose ships would carry enough to keep Martinique going for several months. Ramage took off his hat and wiped his brow, although now the perspiration suddenly felt cold. A big convoy meant a big escort and Wagstaffe's next signal would tell him how many frigates there were. The signal after that, if there was one, would tell him how many ships of the line were down there off Pointe des Salines.

'Deck there! She's lowered that flag and hoisted another!'

'Number four, sir!' Paolo shouted excitedly. ‘The escort includes four frigates.’

'Watch for the next one,' Ramage growled, and felt time slowing down as tension knotted his muscles.

'They're hauling the second one down, sir!' the masthead lookout reported.

Were they bending on another flag or simply taking the last one off and making up the halyard on its cleat? A minute passed, and then two. The capstan was groaning, and Jackson was watching him rubbing the scar on his brow, while Paolo kept his telescope trained on La Créole.

Aitken had seen the two signals and, like Ramage, was waiting anxiously to see if there was a third. Like Ramage he knew that it would be a death sentence for them all, whether it reported one ship of the line or ten.

He had often wondered how he would feel if he received orders that would probably cost him his life if he carried them out. Now he thought he knew. Many times in the past few years he had been given orders that had sent him into action where there was a chance of being killed or maimed. Although that was always frightening, death was far from certain. The thought in most minds was that death took the next man and left you, so there was a good chance of getting through alive. It was vastly different when the orders told you in effect that the odds were so enormous you were most unlikely to survive.

Such orders were like a long-faced and mournful-voiced judge sitting bewigged in his high chair and passing a death sentence on you. A flag signal from La Créole saying there was a ship of the line as well as four frigates with the French convoy would mean that by sunset there would not be a dozen men left alive in the Juno or the Surcouf. If Wagstaffe carried out his instructions he would survive because he had been given strict orders that if things became desperate he was to escape and get to Barbados to warn the Admiral.

So here he was, a damnable long way from Dunkeld, waiting to see if the judge was going to sentence him and the Surcoufs. Surprisingly, he felt no fear, or at least not the kind of fear he had known before, when his stomach seemed filled with cold water, his knees lost their strength and he wanted to run into a dark corner and hide. Perhaps it was another sort of fear he had never met before. He did not feel it in his body, really, although there was no denying that his stomach muscles were knotting. It was lurking at the back of his mind, like a mist forming in the valley at Dunkeld of an autumn's evening, slowly and gently soaking his jacket and kilt. But it did not make him want to run into a dark corner. In fact it was having the opposite effect, making him a little impatient, perhaps, much as a man sentenced to be hanged might want to get it all over as quickly as possible.

This was not how he had imagined it, and the more he thought the more he knew that although the final effect would be the same as receiving a death sentence from a judge, the way he felt now was not the way he would feel if he was about to be marched off to a condemned cell.

The sunshine and bright colours, the deep blue of the sea, the diving pelicans and slowly wheeling frigate birds made some difference. So did the palm trees along the white sandy beach and the fact that he was commanding his own frigate, however briefly. When he took her into her last battle he would be the captain, and he would be unlikely to revert to being a first lieutenant again because there would be no ship left for anyone to command. Yet it was not really any of those things that accounted for his mood, although admittedly if he had to die it was satisfying to do so commanding his own ship.

He had been watching the Juno's anchor cable through his telescope, noting how it had been hove in until it made the same angle as her mainstay. He glanced back to her quarterdeck and saw a man standing there motionless in white breeches and blue coat, a cocked hat on his head. A man who, with his wealth and social position, could have been standing in a fashionable London drawing-room, with every mother of an unmarried daughter circling him, the girls laughing gaily at his slightest joke, the mothers exclaiming with delight and planning a wedding at Westminster Abbey. Or he could have been in Cornwall, where the Ramage family had big estates, living the life of a wealthy landowner, with nothing worse to bother him than an occasional raid by poachers on the pheasant runs.

There was also this Italian Marchesa. After naming the battery on the Diamond after her the former Tritons had said she was the most beautiful woman most of them had ever seen, with the spirit of an unbroken Highland pony. The men could not understand why Captain Ramage had not married her yet, because there seemed little doubt that they were both in love.

Instead of staying behind in London or on the Cornish estate, Ramage was in the West Indies, two hundred yards away, standing on the quarterdeck of his frigate with deadly danger two or three hours away. But this danger was of his own choosing too, because no one would expect him to take two frigates into action against such odds with not a ship's company shared between them.

Yet he was going to, and it was his own decision. The previous evening Aitken had been appalled and not a little frightened when Captain Ramage had begun by explaining the possibilities open to them, the ways that at least some of the convoy could be destroyed. Gradually he had become interested in the way the Captain outlined the alternatives open to the French and to themselves, then fascinated by the man's words, fascinated by the way he took a sheet of paper, pencilled in a few lines showing ships' tracks and the wind direction, and showed that what had seemed impossible could perhaps be done, using surprise. That was the word he had used frequently, 'Surprise', with the corollary that if you could not find it naturally, you created it.

Looking back on the evening, Aitken realized that the solitary figure on the Juno's quarterdeck was responsible for his present unlooked for but welcome state of mind. It was marvellous that his old fears had vanished in such a way that he felt sheepish ever to have felt them all the times he had previously been in action. Down in the Juno's cabin in the dim lanternlight, listening to the Captain's quiet voice, watching old Southwick nod, hearing the answers to questions from Wagstaffe, fear somehow became remote: something that might be felt by lesser men in other ships and squadrons, but certainly of no interest to any man in the Juno, the Surcouf or La Créole.

The Captain was a sort of mirror, Aitken thought. He held a mirror in front of each man, and the reflection the man saw was of the person he would like to be, fearless, intelligent, resourceful ... A mirror was not a good simile because it implied having only a glimpse of the ideal that vanished when the mirror was removed. The curious thing about Captain Ramage was that, having made you look at the man you'd like to be, he left you feeling that you were that man. He changed you, or your attitudes, so you would never again be fearful or a weakling. '

Aitken shrugged his shoulders. He felt the man's influence powerfully but he could not analyse it satisfactorily. Perhaps it was what was called leadership. Until yesterday evening he had assumed that leadership was a question of being the senior officer, the man who gave orders and made decisions. The Captain was his own age, yet he could draw more out of other men than they thought they possessed and leave them determined not to fail him or themselves.

Now he understood the devotion of the dozen former Tritons who had joined the Juno just before she left Spithead. Each one of them was just another good seaman, well trained and disciplined, a prime topman and a welcome addition to any ship's company. Yet they were more than that. They seemed to carry a confidence that at times bordered on arrogance. The Captain never showed them any favouritism, rather the reverse and it was something Aitken had never met before. Each and every one of those men would at a word or gesture not only follow Captain Ramage on whatever desperate business he might embark, but had done so many times in the past and only wanted to be allowed to go on.

Jackson carried a Protection declaring him to be an American subject, so that he need only pass the word to an American Consul and he would be released from the Royal Navy. Yet he was the cheerfully willing unofficial leader of the Tritons as well as being the Captain's coxswain. They were a motley group. The seaman Stafford made no secret of the fact that being a locksmith had been a natural stepping stone to becoming a burglar, a calling interrupted only when the pressgang seized him. The Italian Rossi's devotion was such that Aitken had the uncomfortable feeling that at the slightest hint from the Captain, he would slit a man's throat without question...

The quartermaster had obviously been trying to attract his attention for some time. 'Mr Lacey hailed from the fo'c'sle, sir: we're at long stay.'

'Very well,' Aitken said, realizing that his thoughts had been miles away from the Surcouf.

'An' the schooner, sir, she 'asn't 'oisted another signal.' Aitken stared at the man. 'How long ago did she hoist the last one?'

'Five minutes or so, sir!' the startled man answered. 'Perhaps more.'

He managed to suppress a sigh of relief. There was no ship of the line with the French convoy, only four frigates against their two. He had been sentencing himself and the Surcoufs to death for the past five minutes, when with only four frigates there was a chance. Not the sort of chance many men would want to take at a gaming table, but certainly not one that would bother the Captain.

Yesterday evening Southwick had asked the Captain what he expected the French to send, and had been told that since it was an important convoy, with mostly naval and military supplies, he would expect six merchant ships or transports, with an escort of at least four or five frigates and perhaps a ship of the line. Not a new 74-gun ship but possibly an old sixty-four. If the convoy comprised a dozen ships he would expect five or six frigates and a 74-gun ship.

Southwick bad questioned the size of the escort, pointing out that a British convoy homeward bound from Jamaica would be lucky to have three frigates to escort a hundred ships. The Captain had pointed out that while we could sail large convoys with small escorts, the French could only sail small convoys with large escorts. We had many ships of war at sea, but most of the French fleet was blockaded by British squadrons at Brest and Toulon.

'Sir, the Juno's coming up to short stay,' the quartermaster reported. He seemed to have noticed that his commanding officer was preoccupied, and Aitken cursed under his breath. He must stop daydreaming. He picked up the speaking trumpet and hailed Lacey. It was going to be the very devil of an afternoon, and he was glad that the men had finished dinner before La Créole's first signal had been sighted.

In the Juno Ramage waited patiently for the first flag in the next group of signals from the schooner to give him Wagstaffe's estimate of the French convoy's speed. The one after that would tell him something of the formation they were in. Then would come the signal telling him whether the convoy was following the coast to go inside the Diamond or staying outside. Once La Créole had told him all that, only the final signal remained. That gave the moment when Wagstaffe judged that the two frigates should leave Petite Anse d'Arlet and sail down to the Diamond to appear in sight of the French and spring the trap. It was putting a lot of responsibility on Wagstaffe's shoulders but there was no choice because the alternative was to risk the French sighting the Juno and Surcouf too soon.

The capstan had been pawled and the men were resting after their spell at the bars. The pace of events was slow enough at the moment for the men to have time to feel the heat. They were unwilling to stand still in bare feet on the scorching deck and he knew that the fo'c'sle must be like a furnace. Half a dozen men had lowered the quarterdeck awning, in a few minutes it would be lashed up and stowed below out of the way.

The masthead lookout hailed the deck and Paolo trained his telescope. 'Number five, sir.' He consulted the list of signals and added: 'Convoy making five knots, sir.' There must be much more wind out there if it was making five knots. It was ten miles to the beginning of the Fours Channel, so the French would take two hours to get to the door of the trap. It would take the Juno and the Surcouf less than an hour, at the same speed, to get into position.

''La Créole's signalling again, sir,' Paolo said, beating the masthead lookout's hail. 'Number nine. Convoy in loose standard formation, sir.'

That meant that the convoy was in two or three columns, with a frigate ahead and astern and one on either beam, although they would very soon shift the frigate on the land side out to seaward. That told Ramage much of what he wanted to know: the French were not expecting trouble, otherwise the merchantmen would be bunched up. Fear was the only certain recipe for good station-keeping. The escort must be expecting one British frigate at most, and they would be confident they could drive her off. Most French frigates had thirty-six guns, four more than the majority of the British, and they rarely put to sea with a ship's company of less than 300. They might even have seen La Créole, identified her as a French privateer; and concluded that the British had lifted the blockade.

The Master came up to the quarterdeck to report that everything was ready forward and Ramage looked at his watch. 'We won't be weighing for another hour, Mr Southwick. Hoist out the boats, and then beat to quarters. We'll have time to get guns loaded and run out before we leave here. If we have enough grommets, get fifteen extra roundshot on deck for each gun. And make sure the men keep the head pumps busy, wetting the deck every few minutes, in this heat.'

He thought for a moment and remembered that all the Marines were in the Surcouf. 'Let's have every musket and pistol on board ready and loaded: stack them along the centre line if necessary, if there aren't enough hooks for them.'

'D'you want grappling irons rigged, sir?'

Ramage shook his head. 'We'll have no need of them. And,' he added, trying to make his voice sound casual, 'make sure the carpenter has a good supply of shot plugs ready . . .'

The stay tackle was hooked on and the launch was hoisted off the booms amidships, swung over the side and lowered. While it was being hauled aft, where it would tow astern, one of the cutters was being hooked on. Fifteen minutes later the Juno's four boats were astern, out of the way. Leaving them stowed on board in their normal position would have meant a grave risk of enemy shot shattering them and hurling lethal showers of splinters over the men at the guns. Splinters caused more casualties than actual shot. Towed astern the boats were out of the way and far less likely to be damaged.

While some men were hauling at the stay tackle, others were hurrying round the deck placing the grommets, thick rope rings, in which shot would rest like grotesque black eggs in a nest. Arms chests were hoisted up from below and muskets taken out and loaded, the first of them being put in the racks on the inside of the bulwarks between the guns. Loaded pistols, cutlasses and tomahawks were hung on hooks beside them, while the long boarding pikes, their ash handles well varnished, were stowed vertically in their racks round the masts, looking from a distance like bundles of steel-tipped fascines.

Now the crews of each gun were going through the loading procedure, working on their own because there were no officers to give them orders. The locks had been brought up from the magazine and secured to the breech of the guns, the flints had been checked and the trigger lines coiled up and placed on the breeches. The tompions protecting the muzzles of the guns had been taken out, the tackles overhauled so the ropes would run freely. Sponge and match tubs were being rolled into position and filled from a head pump rigged amidships which had already wetted the decks.

Down below, heavy blankets soaked with water had been hung up, surrounding the approaches to the magazine, so that no flash from an explosion could get through and detonate the powder stored there. Already the gunner was in the magazine itself, wearing felt slippers (shoes might set off loose powder), passing the cartridges through the blanket fire screens to waiting boys who slid them into the cylindrical wooden cartridge boxes, slipped the lids on and brought them up on deck, where they waited along the centre line behind their particular guns until called by the gun captains.

Black leather fire buckets with 'Juno' painted on them were also being topped up with water at the head pump and put back on their hooks under the quarterdeck rail, where they would swing with the roll of the ship and not spill. The fire engine would be hauled out and its cistern filled with water. In the ward-room Bowen was preparing his instruments and his assistant was winding bandages. The ward-room table had been scrubbed and lines put ready to hold writhing men. Beside it was an empty tub, the receptacle for 'wings and limbs' in case amputations were necessary.

Normally when the Juno went into action her Captain and Master were on the quarterdeck, with the four lieutenants at the guns, each commanding a division. Now Ramage was relying entirely on the gun captains, who were trained seamen but nevertheless accustomed to having an officer behind them bellowing orders through the thick smoke and noise of battle. He had assembled all the gun captains and second captains earlier and told them to use their common sense. The moment they heard Ramage tell them to open fire, they were to continue as long as their guns would bear, but they must fire steadily, with every shot well aimed.

La Créole was still in sight running west for two or three miles from Diamond Hill and then beating back, always in sight of the Juno and of the French, her Tricolour flying. Behaving, in fact, just as the French officers in the convoy would expect a privateer to behave. She was fast enough to ignore the current; her great fore and aft sails drove her through the water as though she were a skimming dish.

Less than half an hour after giving the series of orders to Southwick Ramage walked round the ship, listening always for a hail from the masthead or quarterdeck warning of another signal from La Créole, talking with the men and inspecting the positions. There had been enough grommets for twenty extra rounds to be stored beside each gun, in addition to those always kept in the shot garlands along the bulwarks and round the coamings.

He peered into the cistern of the fire engine, examined the stands of muskets, sent for the carpenter and listened to his report that shot plugs, boards and tools were ready, heard from a bosun's mate that the tiller tackles were in position, ready to be rigged if the wheel was shot away, and preventer stays prepared in case masts were damaged.

Satisfied that the ship was ready for action, he had an encouraging word with each of the gun captains and went down to his cabin to collect his pistols and sword. Back on the quarterdeck a look through the telescope showed that the Surcouf’s, guns were run out, her boats in the water astern, and Aitken walking up and down the quarterdeck with enviable nonchalance. Obviously he was satisfied that his ship was ready and, like Ramage, impatient for the final signal from La Créole.

The Surcouf had fine lines; the French certainly designed handsome ships. The sheer had a graceful sweep and the bow a pleasing flare. Any captain would be pleased with her appearance, and Ramage knew that few admirals would find fault with her. Yet in three hours she might be reduced to a shattered hulk, lying dead in the water with her masts hanging over the side in a tangle of rigging, her hull and decks torn up by roundshot.

He shivered despite the heat. The Juno could be close to her in the same condition with not a dozen men alive in both ships to raise a cheer or cry for quarter. In considering the number of ships, the odds were only two to one in favour of the French, but in numbers of men (and that was what counted in the end) the odds were about nine to one because there would be about 1200 Frenchmen in their four frigates.

Nine to one. It was the first time he had reduced his gamble to actual figures, and it frightened him. Two frigates against four seemed acceptable, but one of his men against nine Frenchmen was monstrous. What right had he to take his handful of men into battle against such odds? They all trusted him, from Southwick and Aitken to the cook's mate and the youngest powder monkey: the sight of the two frigates with their guns run out was proof of that. They trusted him to work out the odds and only ask of them what was reasonable. He had abused their trust, He held out his hands and clenched all but one of his fingers. Nine to one. If you committed suicide, the Church would not allow your body to be buried in consecrated ground. It was just as well that the sea obligingly accepted whatever it was offered. Then he remembered that not five minutes earlier he had pictured the Juno and Surcouf drifting, shattered shells, manned by corpses, and he cursed his imagination: it killed men and sank ships before their time.