Ramage's Signal

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The sun had just dropped behind the mountains in a blaze of red when the two cutters and launch left the Calypso, heading for the Passe Partout. Both peaks and valleys were darkening as shadows quickly lengthened, and Ramage steered the launch for the tartane, leaving the red and green cutters to circle as though keeping guard. The launch came alongside the tartane in full view of the semaphore tower, and the moment the boat was hooked on, several dozen seamen stood up, holding muskets. Ramage gave a loud hail.

Jackson appeared at the rail and, a few moments later, six seamen wearing handcuffs scrambled clumsily over the bulwarks one after the other and went down the ladder, covered by more men with muskets who had just appeared along the Passe Partout's rail.

The six prisoners - it was obvious to any watchers on shore that they were prisoners of some sort or another - were pushed and cuffed in the launch and made to sit in the centre of the three middle thwarts, with the armed men already in the boat keeping them well covered.

The launch left the Passe Partout and when one of the cutters then went alongside her, the rest of the men on board climbed down into it and, with the other cutter, followed the launch, which was making for the first little beach inside the bay and just under the semaphore tower.

There was now neither wind nor swell waves, and the launch hissed as a few powerful strokes with the oars drove it up the sand. Seamen jumped out to hold the boat and first the guards with muskets scrambled up the sand to the foot of the cliff, turning to keep the boat covered.

Then the men in the boat drove out the handcuffed prisoners, who jumped down on to the sand, unbalanced with their wrists pinned together, and two of them sprawled flat on their faces.

Their cursing was so violent that Ramage, still in the launch, hissed: 'Shut up, you fools!' Then sheepishly he remembered it was perfectly all right for them to speak and swear in English; it was the guards who were supposed to be French.

Leaving two boatkeepers, one of whom was busy securing the grapnel they had dropped as they came in, ready to haul the launch out again when required, Ramage went up to the armed men and the prisoners and waited while first one and then the other cutter ran up on the beach and landed its men.

Ten minutes later Ramage was at the head of a column of forty-eight men, most of whom carried muskets and four of whom had axes, keeping the blades concealed with rags. Near the head of the column stumbled six bedraggled men in handcuffs, all of them doing their best to look like prisoners. Wet hair, a few smears of sand and soil, and sodden clothes, made them seem pathetic figures, but a sharp-eyed onlooker would have noticed that each guard marching beside a prisoner, his musket at the ready, wore two pistols with belt clips, while all the other men with muskets had one pistol each. One would have to be very close to notice that none of the handcuffs was secured with padlocks; in fact the prisoners were having to hold them on.

The track up to the gateway to the semaphore tower was steep but smooth, the surface worn over the centuries by donkeys and peasants who had used it long before muskets and pistols existed.

Finally at the gate Ramage gave a sharp whistle and held up his arm to halt his men. A French soldier emerged from the guardhouse beyond the gate, weaving slightly and hastily pulling on a coat. He recognized Ramage as an officer and in a slurred voice politely asked his business.

'It is none of your affair', Ramage answered arrogantly, 'take me to your commanding officer!'

'But, sir' - the sentry gestured helplessly at the locked gate - 'orders. "Admit no one without him stating his business." It's more -'

'- than your life's worth!' Ramage interrupted impatiently. 'All right, go at once to your commanding officer and tell him that the captain of the frigate anchored in the bay down there has urgent business with him and requires a room in which to lock some English prisoners.'

The sentry nodded nervously, caught sight of the men in handcuffs and scurried along the track towards the buildings.

Ramage turned casually but hissed to the prisoners: 'Make sure none of you drop those handcuffs until you hear me give the word "Calypso"!'

The men muttered in reply and Jackson, now standing next to Ramage, said quietly: 'Bit of luck they don't have a full guardhouse like Foix, sir. One man! Still, at least he keeps the gate locked!'

Ramage saw the sentry running back down the track, struggling to remove a large key from a trouser pocket.

'The commandant's compliments, sir. He asks that you come to his house at once!' He turned the key in the lock and swung the gate open. 'I didn't have time to tell him you were not alone, sir, but -'

'Lead us to him; we have to sail before nightfall.'

'Yes, sir, indeed, please follow me, I'm sure he will understand ...'

He prattled on as he walked, but Ramage, realizing that the man was drunk rather than naturally stupid, looked carefully round the buildings. The only other soldiers in sight were two sprawled under a gnarled olive tree, their positions showing they had collapsed there drunk and would soon become the target for swarms of mosquitoes.

'How many of you garrison an important station like this?' Ramage asked amiably.

'Normally thirty-five, sir, but we have two men in Port Vendres with venereal disease, and one awaiting court martial. So today there are thirty-two. And the commandant, of course.'

Four buildings just like the barracks at Foix; that larger house at the end of this track and towards which the sentry was leading them must be the commandant's. Beyond it, on the rising ground, the great semaphore tower stood like a section of a wooden wall, its lookout now off duty.

Where the devil were the rest of the garrison?

'Supper time, eh?'

'Ah - no, sir', the sentry said with an inane giggle, 'the men are asleep. Today is the commandant's birthday, and everyone celebrated it. Some had a little too much Banyuls, and are ... resting. The commandant ...'

The commandant was very drunk. The door of his house flung open and a portly man, bald and bow-legged, lurched out holding a coat he was trying to pull over his shoulders, but in twisting his pear-shaped body to get an arm into the sleeve his belt came undone and he had to grab his trousers to prevent them falling.

The sentry stood paralysed, but Ramage moved quickly forward and, as if it was perfectly natural, said: 'Permit me to hold your coat while ...'

'Thank you ... thank you', the commandant said as he did up the belt. Ramage held the tunic and the Frenchman slid one arm into a sleeve with an almost desperate thrust but, Ramage realized, that had been luck: with the second arm he obviously still saw three or four armholes but lunged at the wrong one. Ramage retrieved the waving wrist, slid it into the sleeve and with Jackson's help pulled the jacket into place.

'De Vaux, lieutenant de vaisseau, commanding the frigate anchored down there, sir!' Ramage said briskly.

The commandant looked blearily down into the bay, obviously startled. 'Sacré bleu, all those ships! When did they come in? Should I fire a salute? I never know about these things. Anyway, my one gun is honeycombed, they tell me, and will explode if I fire it. You understand "honeycomb"? Air bubbles trapped in the metal while casting? It is my birthday and the men gave me a party. But no honeycomb, which I like, but much Banyuls, which I also like. De Vaux, that was the name of a young man I met once, commanded a frigate, or a fleet. Navy, anyway; not a soldier.'

He stopped talking and screwed up his eyes, trying to concentrate. 'That makes two of you, because you are called De Vaux, too. All those ships down there!' He turned on the sentry. 'Why was I not told? You are the lookout!"

'But, sir', the man protested, 'I thought the tower would -'

'Thought, thought - you have never thought in your life! A fleet sails in and you keep the gate locked.'

The commandant realized that there were several men behind Ramage and Jackson.

'You've brought some friends, eh? Here, sentry, get some more Banyuls. A cask. Collect mugs from the barracks. Toasts for the Navy. The Navy can toast me! Fifty-one years old and I can still chase the women.'

The sentry hurried off, heading for the first barrack building. Ramage glanced at Jackson and raised his eyebrows for a moment. Then he waited for the sentry to emerge again.

The commandant, meanwhile, had been buttoning up his tunic with ferocious concentration but, starting at the bottom and putting the next to lowest button in the lowest buttonhole, the whole garment was now askew and too tight, giving him the lopsided appearance of a man tottering along a steep slope.

At that moment the sentry came out of the building clutching an armful of mugs. He was alone. No one in the building, Ramage guessed, was prepared to help him or, more significant, not interested, or capable, of drinking more wine with the newly arrived sailors.

All the pretence with the 'prisoners' in handcuffs had been completely unnecessary - thanks to the fact that the commandant had been born fifty-one years ago today. Had his mother been a day earlier, or a day later ...

Ramage looked round at his men, giving a wave which attracted their attention because they were all watching him.

'Calypso', he said conversationally, his voice pitched so that the men could hear him, and they split into four groups each heading for a hut.

The commandant, now obviously realizing that either the wine had warped his body or something was radically wrong with his coat, tried to look down the row of buttons, but the outward curve of his belly meant he could only see the top three. He craned his head forward to see the rest but the effort was too much and he toppled forward, sprawling flat on the ground as though crucified.

The groups of seamen passed the sentry who, concentrating on balancing the armful of mugs, took no notice of them - if indeed he saw them.

Ramage saw six pairs of handcuffs lying scattered on the ground, and their former wearers now had pistols.

'We'll leave him there', Ramage said to Jackson, gesturing towards the commandant. 'He'll probably go to sleep.'

He saw four of his seamen hurrying towards him, one coming from each of the huts. The first to arrive reported: 'Nine men in the hut, sir, all blind drunk. We'll never get 'em on their feet!'

The other three seamen reported the same thing. Ramage remembered the two men he had seen sleeping under the olive tree and sent a seaman to see if they were insensibly drunk. Then the sentry arrived, the only man in the garrison, as far as he could see, capable of controlled movement.

Jackson caught his eye. 'Knock him out and then put those handcuffs on his hands and legs', Ramage said. 'And bring a pair of handcuffs for the commandant; we'd better secure him in his bed so that he doesn't fall out!'

He turned to the four seamen. 'Very well, leave the drunks and meet me with your men at the tower; we'll do the job ourselves, since the wine has deprived us of French labour.'

Half an hour later, while the commandant snored in his bed, his wrists secured beneath it by handcuffs so that he could neither sit up nor turn over, and the sentry lay in the barracks, unconscious and also secured by handcuffs, the Calypsos hacked at the heavy beams supporting the semaphore tower. It was just as substantial as the one at Foix, but the seamen who had been carrying axes sent it toppling without being relieved. After that, hands blistered and muscles aching, they handed over to other groups who took it in turns to destroy the whole structure, so that none of the wood could be used again.

While the men hacked, Ramage watched the bay below with his glass. Apparently no one down there had noticed the tower toppling. Nor was that surprising; the noise would not carry that far, and from the village they could only see the tower end-on, so that it seemed more like a tree trunk, and it was unlikely anyone would see it at the moment it toppled.

Finally Jackson came up to report: 'There's not a piece of timber left that's more than two feet long, sir.'

'Very well', Ramage said, closing the telescope. 'We haven't disturbed anyone down there, so we'll march back in regular order to the boats. There's no need to spike that cannon over there', he added, remembering Jackson would not have understood the commandant. 'It's honeycombed and they daren't fire it.'

It was almost dark by the time the Calypso's topsails filled aback and she did a long sternboard out of Collioure, followed by the Passe Partout which could easily wear round and pass the frigate on her way to the open sea.

Southwick had thoroughly enjoyed Ramage's recounting of the assault on the Collioure semaphore tower, which he had watched by telescope, and had promptly named it the Battle of Banyuls.

'With a bit of luck no one at the other two stations is going to know about it until tomorrow at the earliest', he commented.

'And those men up there aren't going to sober up tonight', Ramage said. 'Even when the sentry recovers consciousness there's no one to hear his shouts. And by sunrise the commandant will have such a bad head that he'll be scared it'll fall off if he raises his voice. Anyway, a good job done with no casualties.'

'Will it save Aitken, I wonder?' Southwick speculated soberly.

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'It might. We've just done all we can; the rest is up to luck. Now, I want every bit of canvas set, and let's hope between here and Europa Point we sight the convoy.'