Ramage's Signal

CHAPTER TEN

Will Stafford had worked it all out without any difficulty, he told Jackson and Rossi. The captain had very cunningly ordered the convoy to come to the bay; now he was going to lead it to Gibraltar, lowering the French colours as the Calypso hauled her wind to make up for Europa Point.

The three men, off watch, were sitting on the fo'c'sle gossiping and enjoying the mellow Mediterranean night, finding it too hot with the light following wind to go below.

Jackson, pointing at the Pole Star, said mildly: 'We're steering about southeast. That means Sardinia, Sicily, Egypt or the Morea. It doesn't mean Gibraltar, which happens to be in the opposite direction.'

'We're just getting a good offing before we turn into the Gut', Stafford said airily. 'We don't want to get caught in a Levanter with Spain to leeward. These mules couldn't claw off a carpet, let alone a dead lee shore.'

'They've been clawing off lee shores for years', Jackson commented. 'You don't live long in the Mediterranean otherwise.'

'Italy', Rossi said, as though announcing its discovery. 'The captain is sailing back to Italy.'

'On this course it could be - the southern part, anyway', Jackson agreed. 'But why Italy?'

'He has friends there - I know', Rossi said darkly.

'The Marchesa's living in England, Volterra's occupied, we've just finished making the Calypso very unpopular round Elba, so I can tell you the captain has no friends there - I know!' Jackson said.

'Why did Mr Orsini go to all the ships when they arrived then?'

'Because he speaks fluent French', Jackson said.

'And Italian', Rossi said triumphantly.

'And Spanish!' said Stafford, not to be outdone.

'So he could talk with the Spanish captains as well as the French', Jackson said. 'If he spoke a word of Italian tonight, it was to swear when he banged his shin on a thwart.'

'How do you know he banged his shin on a thwart?' demanded Rossi. 'You weren't in the boat.'

'My oath', Stafford grumbled, 'you really are 'ard work, Rossi my old sparrer.'

'Sparrer? Who is he?'

'Sparrow', Jackson said. 'Stafford's English is not very good. The bird. Little brown things, you see thousands of them everywhere.'

'Why does he call me a sparrer, then? Rossignol, perhaps. I sing not so good as the nightcap -'

'Nightingale', Jackson corrected him.

'- as the nightingale, then, but as for this sparrer -'

'Look, t'aint nothing ter do with singing', Stafford said. 'It's - well, where I come from to call someone "My old cock sparrer" is like, well, "mate", or "chum".'

'Perhaps, but this cock sparrer I do not like', Rossi said firmly. They shit all over you. I know. Even in Milan Cathedral during the Blessing.'

'All right, all right, I'm sorry', Stafford said. 'But why are we going to Italy?'

'I didn't say we were definitely going', Rossi said impatiently. 'I just hope we are.'

'Why?'

'This bloddy Spanish blackstrap, that's why', Rossi said crossly. 'The only true red wine is from Toscana - Tuscany, you call it. This Spanish vinegar the purser was given in Gibraltar - even Napolitani wouldn't drink it, and they're not particular if it is free.'

'Mention it to the captain', Jackson teased.

'Mama mia, you know how much he drinks.'

Jackson looked astern. 'Well, the convoy is forming up astern of us, so the course is southeast for the night anyway.'

'Very strange', Stafford said. 'You must admit that, Jacko; it's very strange.'

'I admit that', Jackson said readily enough, 'but it's "very strange" things on Mr Ramage's part that's put a pile of prize money in your pocket. How much are you worth now?'

'A few 'undred guineas', Stafford admitted. 'Enough to buy a nice quiet inn whenever I feel the urge to "run" or the war ends.'

'Don't "run"', Jackson advised. They'd piek you up in a couple of days, and the soldiers would relieve you of your guineas, too.'

'I was only jokin', but I got enough put away for a nice wife and a nice old age. In fac' I was thinking only the other day, the pressgang did me a good turn.'

'Yes, you certainly wouldn't have made a tenth of that burgling.'

'Burgling?' Stafford was horrifïed. 'I was a locksmith.'

'Yes, we know', Rossi said ironically. 'Always working by night.'

'Shut up!' hissed Jackson. 'What's that noise?'

It was not a single noise but a continuous one, starting off with an eerie creaking and groaning aloft which quickly merged into a crackling like the snapping of dried sticks and reached a climax with a bang like a gunshot. The three men looking aloft and aft, up at the foremast, saw the foreyard break into halves and come crashing down to the deck, leaving the topsail on the yard above ripped to pieces and beginning to flog in the wind.

Both Rossi and Stafford began to run aft but Jackson shouted to them to stop. In the few seconds it had taken to happen he had realized that as the two halves of the great yard - the second largest in the ship, seventy feet long and a foot and a half in diameter - hit the deck there had been no screams of pain, so it was unlikely that any injured men were trapped. And there was still more wreckage to fall - blocks the size of small church bells, perhaps the stunsail booms were still up there, caught in the rigging and yet to fall ... As he waited his fears were confirmed; heavy objectsthudded down on to the deck like falling roundshot, blocks slid off the ropes or ripped tackles, great sections of the torn foresail, which had been furled on the yard, fell like bales of straw, still bound by gaskets and tangled in clewlines and buntlines.

Then he saw men coming from aft with lanterns, advancing cautiously. 'Right lads, now we can go, but watch for anything else coming down.'

Aitken and Southwick had been standing with Ramage on the quarterdeck when the yard broke; both had begun to run forward, both had been halted by Ramage for the same reason Jackson had stopped the two seamen.

Once lanterns had been hurriedly lit, Ramage stayed at the quarterdeck rail as the first lieutenant and master went forward to begin with a search for injured men. Ramage knew only too well what had happened; all that mattered was first that no men had been hurt and second that the yard could be repaired. The carpenter was a good man and no doubt he and his mates could fish the two halves together again, because although the Calypso had spare topsail yards and topgallant yards stowed along the booms beside the boats, she did not have spare fore and main yards. He picked up the speaking trumpet and called for the bosun.

The man came running up the quarterdeck ladder as though answering a routine hail.

'Get the spare topsail sent up on deck from the sailroom, and a pair of slings. Leave the new foresail for the time being. I want that topsail hoisted up and bent on first. From the look of it there won't be much to save from the old one.'

'No, sir. Pity the sheets didn't part ...'

The topsail sheets passed through shoulder blocks at each end of the lower yardarm so that when the yard broke and fell its weight wrenched down on the sheets, which were secured one at each lower corner of the topsail, and tore it in half as one might rip a sheet of paper by pulling on the two lower corners.

Now was the time that Ramage detested being the captain: he would prefer to be forward there, going through thewreckage, making sure none of the men were trapped, seeing exactly what the damage was (apart from the broken yard, he would be lucky if two guns each side had not been dismounted and the carriages smashed), and assessing the best way of repairing it. Carpenters were skilled men but he found that sometimes they were narrow in their ideas.

He turned away deliberately and walked slowly aft, making sure he did not have his night vision affected by the reflection of one of the poop lanterns on a shiny section of the taffrail. With his nightglass he looked at the ships astern. No formation, not a set of masts in line to show they were on the same course. To work out which tack they were on he had to reverse in his mind what he saw with his eye, as well as visualize the ships the right way up. He shut the telescope with an impatient gesture: all the ships lacked was a drover and his dog, then they would look like ewes on their way to the market. However, he had to be fair; the three largest ships were reasonably close to the Calypso's wake and no doubt the rest would soon follow like children scared of the dark.

He called to the quartermaster and was told the ship was handling well under the maintopsail alone, despite the flogging remnants of the foretopsail, and even as the man replied, Ramage heard the noise lessen and, glancing up, saw that topmen were already out on the topsail yard, cutting the lacings securing the remains of the sail, which floated down like ghostly nightshirts.

Kenton came out of the darkness and saluted.

'The first lieutenant ordered me to report, sir. The foreyard broke in a split twelve feet long and Mr Aitken says it will be easy to fish. The foresail, as far as we can see because the gaskets still secure most of it to the pieces of the yard, can be repaired. Five guns - three to larboard and two to starboard - dismounted, but only one carriage smashed -'

'The injured', Ramage interrupted. 'How many?'

'Oh, none, sir', Kenton said, the surprise showing in his voice. 'The deck is badly scored, a section of the starboard bulwark is stove in, but not a man hurt.'

'Very well, what else?'

That's all for now, sir: the carpenter is inspecting it. He will be reporting to you in five or ten minutes, but I heard Southwick say he reckoned the heat of the Tropics had made the wood brittle, and that bad weather a few days ago ...'

'Twelve feet, you say?'

'At least, sir. A nice clean split. Glue, fish and woolding ...'

The carpenter was the next to report. He was a small, wizened man but because he refused to wear a hat his face and forehead always had a deep tan - a colour, Southwick always maintained, halfway between oiled teak and varnished mahogany, teasing the carpenter that he was carved from a wood unknown to man.

Lewis was a Man of Kent, not a Kentish Man. He was always careful to explain that it was a matter of which side of the Medway a man was born. He had been born, in fact, within a few miles of one of Ramage's uncles: while repairing a drawer of the captain's desk one day he had casually mentioned that as a boy he poached regularly over the uncle's estate, and even as a grown man before the war, whenever he had leave he enjoyed taking out a ferret of a night and netting a few burrows.

'Yer uncle never missed them rahbbets, sir', he said. 'Bein' as 'ow 'e'd have given me permission ter snare, net or shoot any rahbbets I wanted, though 'e'd have drawn a line at pheasints or partridge. But poachin' 'em was wot gave 'em the aroma, sir; catchin' 'em legal like would have taken the taste away, like bilin' 'em too long.'

Now Lewis was reporting to the landowner's nephew and, Ramage reflected wryly, everyone in the Calypso was taking part in a kind of poaching ...

'Larboard side, sir, startin' abowt ten feet outboard of the jeers; the yard just split like an 'ead o' fresh celery. The split be fourteen feet three inches long, clean as a whistle, none o' the wood lorst. Glue up a treat, it will; bolt every foot, then six or eight fishes 'bout eighteen feet long, and wooldin' overthe 'ole thing and the yard'll be stronger than afore it broke.'

'You deserve a brace of pheasants, Lewis, and I'll tell my uncle!'

'Ah, 'ave 'em 'anging in the barn a week an' they'll roast up a treat.'

'When can I expect to have that yard across again?'

Lewis scratched his head and then, holding his fists out in front of him, began sticking out one finger after another. Finally he had all the fingers and thumb of his right hand and the thumb and two fingers of his left.

'What be the time now, sir, then?'

Ramage looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle lamp. 'Just before midnight.'

'If I can have some men to help haul the two sections of the yard so I can true 'em up before gluing and bolting, and then help me and my mates turn it while we's driving the bolts and then fitting the fishes - well, ten or twelve hours, sir.'

'No signs of rot?'

'None, sir; clean as a whistle.'

'Why did she go?'

'Reckon the wood just got brittle from the tropical 'eat, sir. Sun's always beatin' on the top of the yard. And French wood, sir. Must have been an old yard from another ship, 'cos it's in one piece. A new one at the time this ship was built would be two trees scarphed together; they'd do a vertical scarph in the middle. Short o' long timber, they are.'

'Anyway', Ramage said thankfully, 'you can glue, bolt, fish and woold without having to cut scarphs?'

'Easy, sir. Just so long as the sea don't get up and set those two pieces rollin' about the deck!'

Ramage nodded and Lewis went back down the ladder. How long had it all taken? Perhaps twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, on a calm Mediterranean night, the Calypso had been changed suddenly from an efficiënt fighting machine - capable, for example, of sinking every ship in the convoy with the ease of Lewis and his ferret chasing rabbitsout of the burrow and into nets, to dispatch them with a sharp blow across the back of the neck - to a wretched hulk that could not work her way to windward or manoeuvre against much more than a laden merchant ship.

Well, Aitken and Southwick had been complaining that patrolling off the coast of Languedoc was a dull business but now, although they might be short on fighting, they could hardly complain there was little to do: summoning up a convoy of fifteen French ships by juggling with a giant chess board, a bout with a Gulf of Lions gale, and now the foreyard crashing down around their ears should keep them occupied for a while.

Ramage was mistaken. Southwick was back on the quarterdeck five minutes later, bustling because he tended to bustle after any unusual physical exertion, as though it wound him up like a grandfather clock.

'Shall I sway up the spare maintopsail yard in the meantime, sir, and set the spare foretopsail on it? Just in case we meet something.'

Having thirty or forty extra seamen working round the foremast sending up the spare yard while Lewis and his men started on the broken yard would slow up everything.

'No, we'll replace that foretopsail just as soon as they get the spare up from the sailroom, but after that we concentrate on Lewis and his mates. It's a case where juryrigging is likely to delay proper repairs by twelve hours.'

'How long does Lewis want, then?'

'He says ten or twelve hours.'

'By noon, eh? Well, he's a reliable man, sir, and if that's his estimate we can rely on it.'

'I hope so. Will you keep an eye on the bosun while they bend on the new foretopsail?'

'Set her flying, sir, once we're ready?'

Ramage looked astern at the merchant ships, found he could not make out more than one or two, and once again searched the horizon with the nightglass.

'No, leave it furled until we have the foreyard repaired and swayed up: these damned mules astern are so slow we'llprobably have to put a reef or two in the maintopsail just to avoid leaving them too far astern.'

Southwick gave one of his typical sniffs. He had a dozen or more, each of which had a different tone and meaning. This one, Ramage knew, was reserved for situations of which Southwick disapproved but was powerless to change.

A fast frigate in a stiff wind would be hard put to keep these fifteen merchantmen in any sort of formation; closing and firing shots across their bows would not hurry them up; shouted threats of putting a roundshot into them would result in a shower of Gascon, Breton and Norman abuse. So, since the Calypso was for the moment a disabled frigate, and far from there being a stiff wind there was only a mild breeze, the only thing was to be thankful that of all times the foreyard decided to split, now was the most convenient, because the Calypso was hardly rolling at all, and repairs should be comparatively easy.