Ramage's Signal

CHAPTER TWENTY

Just after dawn three days later Ramage stood alone at the quarterdeck rail watching as the sun rising slowly began to light up the Pyrenees showing ahead, through the network of the rigging and each side of the great sails. This stretch of the Mediterranean, from the tiny French port of Collioure at the foot of the northern slopes to the Spanish town of Rosas about twenty-five miles to the south, always seemed one of the most beautiful parts of the western Mediterranean. Here the Pyrenees, having started over on the cold Atlantic side, and except for a few passes effectively sealing Spain from France, now tumbled down to the Mediterranean, as if thankful to find warmer water and bluer skies.

Here was the border between France and Spain, a border acknowledged in words by Paris and Madrid but of little consequence to the Basques and the Catalans living astride it, speaking their own languages and both contemptuous of the two nations they regarded as trespassers.

Somewhere over there, among the mountains and the coastal passes at which Ramage now looked, Hannibal had marched two thousand years ago with his 50,000 men, 9000 cavalry and thirty-seven elephants, to stop the Romans invading Spain. Hannibal had originally come from Carthage, just south of Sardinia. Had he ever visited the Golfo di Palmas?

'That'll be Cap Béar on the larboard bow, with Port Vendres just to the north', Southwick said, having just come up from below. 'With the glass you might pick out two towers, one low down and the other high up.'

Ramage nodded: he knew this part of the coast well.

'Ah, the sun is just catching the snow on the top of Le Canigou, sir. Over 9000 feet high, that mountain.'

'And a blessing to navigators', Ramage commented. 'An unmistakable shape with those double peaks, and snow for good measure.'

'That's the trouble, the snow makes it difficult to get "a good measure"', Southwick grumbled. 'Taking an altitude of Canigou to find the distance off is difficult because with any sun the snow makes it next to impossible to distinguish the peak. Still, no sun usually means the peak is in cloud . . .'

'You need a tape measure, not a sextant', Ramage teased.

Sitting at his desk, Ramage took out the French signal book and again turned to the list of semaphore stations. The entry he sought was brief:

'No. 28, Collioure (Pointe del Mich) ... Albert St Laurent.'

The reference to Pointe del Mich intrigued him. According to some notes in old sailing directions belonging to Southwick, Pointe del Mich was the headland on the south side of the entrance to the narrow bay which, lying in the northern shadow of the Pyrenees, looked as if it had been made by a giant taking a bite out of the coast just where the mountains ended and the land rolled and then flattened into sand dunes and marshes, passing Perpignan and extending all the way round the Gulf of Lions to Marseilles. Then a glance at the chart made it clearer - Pointe del Mich stuck out to sea just far enough to be in sight of the next station to the north, number twenty-seven, and the one to the south, number twenty-nine, Port Vendres - the old 'Port of Venus' of Roman times, well sheltered and, just now, well defended.

This was the difference between the islands of the West Indies and the Mediterranean, of course; from Grenada in the south of the Lesser Antilles to Jamaica in the northwest of the Greater Antilles, buildings and history were recent; little went back more than one hundred and fifty years. But here in the Mediterranean much of what one saw existed before Christ was born. As far as this stretch of coast was concerned, he recalled that the Moors, or Algerines, holding southern Spain were finally driven out only a few years before Columbus sailed to the New World, after creating most of the buildings of any beauty in Spain.

'Mr Southwick, sir!' the Marine sentry called from the door.

The master reported: 'We're two miles off the bay, sir: Jackson's already gone in with the Passe Partout and has anchored about a hundred yards beyond the cliff with the semaphore tower on it. They'll think he's gone close inshore to shelter from this south wind because anchoring on the north side, where the fishing boats are, would be a very rolly berth.'

'Very well, I'll come on deck', Ramage said. He picked up the French lieutenant's hat. 'Damned man had too small a head for me', he complained. 'I get a headache in five minutes.'

'I've seen the mark on your forehead', Southwick said sympathetically. 'Better be like me.' He ran his fingers through his hair. 'At my age no other Navy expects me to wear a hat. And if you don't mind me saying so, sir, that shirt of yours looks a little too fashionable. In these Revolutionary days I don't think captains in the French Navy have stewards with hot irons ...'

'It's a hot afternoon; it'll soon crease. I refuse to wear that man's shirt; he has a chest as narrow as a boarding pike!'

'I wonder what he's doing now?' Southwick said unsympathetically. 'Can you imagine him trying to explain in French to a peasant speaking only Italian how the lieutenant commanding a semaphore station on the coast of Languedoc suddenly found himself and his men tramping across the goat tracks of Sardinia ...'

'I can better imagine the look on the face of the person listening to him', Ramage said as he slipped a cutlass belt over his shoulder and then tightened the belt holding up his trousers. He picked up his two pistols, after checking the priming. He slid the hook on the side of each pistol into his belt. 'The shirt is not of Revolutionary cut or quality', he said ironically, 'nor are these.'

'The Marchesa will be glad you're using them, though', Southwick said. 'I know she's going to ask.'

Ramage led the way out of the cabin, climbed the companionway and blinked in the sunlight as he came up on deck. The glare from the sails was almost blinding, but it was long enough past noon for shadows to be black and sharp among some of the peaks, crags and valleys of the Pyrenees.

'Ah, le Canigou ... it's a long time since I've been so close', he commented to Southwick. 'An impressive brute ...'

Now, looking ahead over the Calypso's bow, he could see right into Collioure Bay. And memories, the chart and what he could now see met in nostalgic collision.

There was Pointe del Mich over on the larboard hand, a jutting headland with - he found the sight excited him - a semaphore tower at its top, a flagpole and Tricolour, and the same sort of huts for the garrison that he had seen at Foix. As the eye travelled inland and round to the head of the bay, there were two indentations in the cliffs with an old, round, lookout tower low down by a sandy beach; then came the immense fortress, which locally was called Le château, skilfully engineered and wedge-shaped so that guns on each side could cover the entire harbour entrance. But now, Ramage saw with his glass, no guns were mounted; shrubs grew along the battlements and clumps of some tenacious, dark green bushes stuck out of the grey stone walls. And then came the beach used by the fishermen and finally, on the north side of the bay, the citadel stood high on the hill, overlooking the tiny church whose circular tower was topped by a cupola. Perched on an outcrop of rock at the water's edge, the tower seemed to be built of wide bands of different-coloured stone, but many years ago it had been explained to Ramage that it had probably started life as a Roman watch tower - the lowest and darkest band of stone. Then the tower was repaired and heightened over the centuries so that the identity of the builders of successive bands was lost in time; not even recorded in legends. People like the Franks, the Normans (who may well have built on the church part) and the Moors, who were probably responsible for the cupola, turning the church into a mosque.

As one looked inland across the mountains above and west of Collioure there were many signs, if not of war, then of the fear of war. There was yet another round tower on a rugged hill overlooking the semaphore station; towering over that on the next higher hill was a small castle. On a more distant and higher mountain perched another signal tower, tall and remote as a hovering kestrel. Collioure's life for two thousand years must have been one of wars and threats; Hannibal's war elephants probably trumpeted their way through here because Collioure stood almost as a guardian at the northern end of the coastal pass through the mountains.

Ramage nodded towards the Passe Partout and told Southwick: 'We'll sound our way in and anchor close under her stern. I don't know which of us will be weighing first but we don't want to get anywhere near the church or that reef beyond it.'

'The island of St Vincent, they call it.'

'The church, too. There's some legend that St Vincent arrived here in an open boat, landing on those rocks. Or perhaps he sailed from here. Anyway, it's all named after him. He'll be the patron saint of the village.'

Half an hour later the Calypso was anchored in four fathoms, almost in the centre of a triangle joining the semaphore tower at the entrance to the bay, the château at its apex, and the church at the other side of the entrance, and Southwick and Ramage were busy supervising the hoisting out of the launch and both cutters. As soon as the three boats were lying astern on their painters, Ramage crouched beside the breech of one of the quarterdeck carronades, where prying eyes on shore would not wonder at his curiosity, and proceeded to inspect Collioure with his glass.

Already he could see the best way up to the semaphore station. There was a small, level, sandy beach in the first little bay inland of Pointe del Mich; the boats could land there, giving the men only a few feet to scramble up to where the track - devious and looking like a dead snake - led over the grey rocks and up to the tower.

No one at the semaphore station seemed to be interested in the Calypso. The tower was just like the one at Foix, complete to the canvas awning over the platform and the telescope on the tripod. There was one man up there, and most of the time he was sitting back in the chair, occasionally picking up a bottle of wine and leaning his head back. Only once in half an hour did Ramage see him swing the telescope south to look at the Port Vendres tower and then north to station number twenty-seven, and rising from the chair and grasping the telescope seemed to make heavy demands on his ability to balance.

There were four fishing boats drawn up on the beach facing the harbour entrance and although all the paint was peeling they had once been decorated in bright colours, red and blue predominating. But the other beach, between the château and the church, was obviously the fishermen's favourite - it gave more shelter when swells came through the entrance, and most of their little houses were built just at the back of the beach, midway between the château and the church, so they could choose either sanctuary.

Nine boats were hauled out. One of them had been turned upside-down and he could see that two planks had been taken out of the hull. Three men were working on replacements, one of them standing on a piece of wood and making chips fly with his adze.

There were trees a few yards back along the beach providing some shade, and he saw what at first glance seemed to be a row of corpses sitting under them on the sand, their backs against a low wall. When he looked more closely he saw they were women, all dressed in black, some with black scarves round their heads and others - they seemed to be younger - with white scarves. But all of them had bundles of fishing net beside them, and all had a leg extended and a bare foot sticking out from the hem of their dress. The big toe, he saw, was used to poke through the mesh of the net and keep a section taut as each woman methodically mended a tear, using a wooden net-making needle which seemed to dart in and out like a pecking bird. Occasionally one of the women would give a violent jerk with her body, as if caught by a spasm of pain, but it was only to heave away the repaired section of the net and draw over the next part, to be extended by the big toe, inspected and if necessary repaired.

In the shade of the high wall of the château, which formed one end of the beach and cut it off from the second, farther round to the south, half a dozen men were making or repairing fishpots, two of them trimming thin laths of wood, using a type of spokeshave, while the others used the new laths to repair the pots, bending them with a skill that came with the years.

The sails had been loosened from the lateen yards on two of the fishing boats and men were sewing in patches. Each boat was very beamy and shallow-draughted, unlike the boats one would see on the beaches of southern England. The mast was stubby and the lateen yard was made up of two pieces of wood fished together in the middle, presumably to give a certain spring and also probably because straight wood was difficult to find. The forward end of the yard was bowsed down tight at the bow of the boat, lashed to a section of stem which stuck up an extra foot or so. The bow piece formed the pivot for the yard, so that when it was hoisted up the mast by the halyard, the forward end stayed low in the boat while the after end rose high, stretching the sail into its traditional triangular, leg-o'-mutton shape.

Ramage saw that the lower hills round the village were heavily terraced, and he could just make out the vines growing on them. Surely Collioure was renowned for its white wine, while farther south was Banyuls, which produced a sweet red to which the village gave its name? It was hard to remember; when he was last here, as a midshipman, such things did not interest him.

Captain Ramage, with a dozen important jobs to do, was dredging his memory for details of local wines ... He swung his telescope round to the citadel, perched on its hill above the church as if to emphasize that in France today the State was above Church. He watched it for five minutes and saw no movement, noting the building was little more than a stone barracks. There were no guns, and more important, no flagpole. He suddenly realized that flagpoles were a great source of information because in Revolutionary France, where it was de rigueur to fly a Tricolour, every military establishment would have both flagpole and flag. The semaphore tower and its buildings had both; the château neither, nor the citadel. So the semaphore station was the only place where there would be soldiers or sailors; the absence of the Royal Navy from the Mediterranean made garrisons unnecessary for little ports like Collioure. *

Jackson arrived on board with Stafford half an hour later, cheerful and obviously delighted at having brought the Passe Partout safely to Collioure.

'Only lost you once, sir', he told Ramage. 'The first night out from Sant' Antioco, when we had that squall. The rain was so thick we missed your stern lantern and couldn't find it again when the squall passed.'

'I'm not surprised', Ramage said, laughing. 'The squall blew it out. The lamp trimmer thought he was going to get a flogging over that. We put up another lantern as quickly as we could.'

Jackson sighed dramatically. 'There was I thinking it was my clever navigation that found you again, sir; instead it was a new lantern! I must admit I thought you were pretty close when we saw the light again ...'

Ramage assembled Southwick, the corporal of Marines, Jackson, Stafford and the three remaining bosun's mates, and said: 'Stand round as though we are gossiping, just in case there are any prying eyes up at the semaphore tower. Now I want you all to listen carefully.

'We are here to destroy that tower, and I want it done so effectively that no signals can be passed until the tower is rebuilt - a week or so's work - unless they are taken by horseback from Port Vendres to the next station to the north of here, which has no name, only a number, twenty-seven. That's thirty miles' riding or more over rough and rocky tracks. Horses and horsemen are likely to be rare; donkeys are the usual transport here.

'You might wonder why I want to knock down this one particular tower when there are so many others. Well, it's so flat where number twenty-seven is built that it would be easy to repair it. Number twenty-nine, at Port Vendres, will be too strong for us: the port is well defended, and even if we managed to destroy the tower, the French would build a new one very quickly because there's a shipyard there, which means wood, nails, shipwrights, carpenters and tools.

'But here in Collioure ...' he gestured round him. 'You can see it is a small fishing bay with a small anchorage. I imagine that boat being repaired over there exhausts the port's carpentry resources.'

He paused a moment because Jackson obviously had a question. Ramage raised his eyebrows and waited.

'Excuse me asking, sir, and I don't want you to think we in the Passe Partout aren't enjoying it, but why knock down a tower at this end of the Mediterranean? Foix is much closer to Toulon, where the orders start from.'

'Ah, that's a good question. Anyone know the answer - or wants to have a guess?'

They all shook their heads and Ramage said: 'Jackson was near when he said Toulon is the source of orders. We want to cut the semaphore now to stop signals, or at least slow them down, somewhere between Toulon and the action!'

'What action?' Southwickexclaimed. 'Action seems scarce round here - at least, until we knock down that tower.'

'We're trying to stop the action', Ramage explained. 'Within a day or so, the Spanish naval authorities at somewhere like Cartagena are going to get word from a fishing boat or a coastal vessel that a French convoy of six ships is sailing westward. They'll know that any convoy that far west can only be intended for Cartagena: there'd be no point in sending it to Almeria or Málaga because, militarily Spain stops at Cartagena. Yet the reports will say the convoy is well to the westward of Cartagena and still steering west.

'So obviously the Spanish admiral at Cartagena will makea signal to the French admiral at Toulon, using the semaphore, asking him what it is all about, because almost certainly he would be the person to send off such a convoyand the only one who could explain why it is passing (haspassed, I hope) Cartagena.

'The semaphores rattle and crash, and the admiral in Toulon reads the signal, realizes he has not sent off any convoy to the westward, and sends back a signal to Cartagena ordering the convoy to be intercepted.

'The admiral in Cartagena sends two or three frigates to sea and they chase poor old Aitken and the rest of them, and they end up dead or prisoners.'

'Unless', Southwick said with one of his cheerful sniffs, 'the admiral in Cartagena can neither send nor receive a signal by semaphore for two or three days, by which time Aitken will be rounding Europa Point.'

'Exactly', Ramage said. 'I'm gambling that the Spanish admiral is too lazy or too nervous of the French to send out frigates without orders. He may not have any - that's more than likely - and expects the admiral at Toulon to order ships out from Alicante or Barcelona. It will take time for him to discover that Collioure's tower is out of action. Messengers on horseback will need a day to take a message from Port Vendres to station twenty-seven, and with luck semaphore replies will by then be held up by darkness between here and Toulon. With the French and Spanish benighted, Aitken has an excellent chance.'

'Everyone in that convoy will owe us a lot', the Marine corporal said happily, sucking his teeth at the prospect.

'We'll see about that', Ramage said, 'but in the meantime this is what we do, starting at sunset. First, we need half a dozen pairs of handcuffs ...'