The Ramage Touch

CHAPTER EIGHT

On board the Calypso, Ramage was already listening to a slightly breathless report from Aitken, who when the lookout hailed had run aloft with a telescope, examined the ships and then come down again to give Ramage a fuller report.

"They're frigates all right, sir, and they look a similar design to us. And they're steering for the south end of Argentario with a quartering wind."

"They look like us, eh? You're sure of that?"

"Built from the same draught, I'm sure," Aitken said confidently. "Sister ships."

"Three of them, though," Southwick grumbled. "There's only supposed to be two."

"Don't complain," Ramage said, "because it means that some French admiral has changed his mind."

"I don't see how that helps us, sir."

Ramage shook his head sadly. There were times when Southwick was remarkably obtuse. "The senior officer of those three French frigates knows the two bombs are expecting to meet only two frigates in Porto Ercole, so he knows that the bomb captains - Renouf anyway - will be surprised to see three. Very well, when he sights the two bombs in company with yet another French frigate - and don't forget we are French built and rigged - he's going to assume the admiral has changed his mind yet again or, more likely, forgotten to tell him an extra frigate has already joined the bombs. Or," he shrugged his shoulders, "we could just be passing them at this very moment . . ."

The explanation seemed to satisfy both Aitken and Southwick, and Ramage listened as the lookout at the mainmasthead shouted down that the Fructidor had hoisted a signal.

Ramage reached for the French signal book, looked up the signal for sighting a strange sail, with the additions indicating the bearing and how many ships there were. Taking the speaking trumpet from Southwick, he called up to the lookout, asking him to describe the flags.

The signals were correct and Ramage ordered the French answering pendant to be hoisted.

"Remind me to tell Kenton to commend that lookout, because the Fructidor's masthead is so low," Ramage told Aitken. "The Brutus should have seen them."

He turned away and began pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck. Aitken, Southwick, the quartermaster and the two seamen moved to leeward to leave him a clear space between the breeches of the guns and the skylight and companionway.

If the three frigates continued making for the south end of Argentario and rounded it, then they could only be making for Porto Ercole to pick up the troops, cavalry and artillery. They would have seen the bomb ketches coming down from the north and noted that they were well ahead of schedule, which was probably a fairly unusual situation for the French to meet. Would they go in to port and pick up the troops and artillery, or anchor and wait for the bombs to provision and water first, as originally ordered?

Three frigates instead of two ... that probably meant that the French were sending more troops and artillery to wherever it was with the bomb ketches than they had first intended. Porto Ercole was small, so would all three frigates try to berth in the harbour together? It should not be impossible if they used their boats to tow.

He pictured the chart with the harbour showing very small. Three frigates with anchors out ahead could lie with sterns to the quay. Their bows would be to the east, which meant that with the wind from the north, west or south they could get out again just by making sail: they would not have to be towed out. If the wind was east, from ahead, it would depend on the strength. If it was light, their boats could tow out the frigates one at a time just far enough so that as they let fall their sails, each would clear the headland forming the southern entrance and then the tiny island just south of it - little more than a huge rock called Isolotto - as they tacked. If the wind had any strength, then the frigates would be trapped in Porto Ercole until it changed, and it would have to be a change of several points.

Was there any chance that this present northerly breeze would freshen and veer to, say, east-north-east, even if it would not veer the whole eight points and set in from the east? Forecasting the weather in the Mediterranean was only slightly easier than in the West Indies, and less certain than throwing dice. There was a chance - but no more than that.

At the present rate of progress the galliots, bomb ketches, call 'em what you will, would not get to Argentario until after nightfall, and then only abreast the northern end. They would have to go almost three quarters of the way round the coast before arriving at Porto Ercole - by then it would be almost dawn. The French in the frigates would have had a good night's sleep; the men in the bombs and the Calypso would have spent a restless night trying to catch every whiffle and back eddy of wind to get round Argentario. Spaccabellezze, Spadino, Vongher, Bocca d'Inferno, Argentario itself - the names of the peaks came back to him without any effort, and each of them would affect the wind. If the wind was light north or east, those peaks cast a windless shadow well offshore. With luck there would be an offshore wind for the night, enough to let them creep round. Apart from hitting the cliffs themselves, at least there was nothing to run into: just the rock of Argentarola sticking up like a tooth beyond Cala Grande, but they would not be that close inshore.

Three fully-manned French frigates versus two tiny bomb ketches and a single frigate, her ship's company depleted by two prize crews and the Marines needed to guard forty prisoners. Their Lordships at the Admiralty would regard the odds as about even . . . Given surprise as an ally, this was probably true. Surprise. You suddenly leapt out of the hedge and said "Boh!" Or you surfaced from the deep like a whale and blew a great fountain of water.

He did not turn at the next walk forward; instead he went to the quarterdeck rail and looked ahead at the two bomb ketches rolling along like plump wives on their way to the market, and at Argentario beyond, a mountainous, sprawling island with rounded peaks and laced with narrow valleys still in shadow, although it was nearly noon. In the West Indies one could stand upright and throw no shadow because the sun was directly overhead, but Italy was too far north for that, and the shadows of trees and valleys gave more emphasis to the landscape. He broke his own rule and leaned his elbows on the rail, but resting your head on your hands really did not help concentration - at least it seemed silly to think it did.

It was all a gamble, a double gamble rather, or it would be if he tried it. He had to gamble everything, first on the wind not dropping away any more, and then on it not turning south - a head wind would stop everything. He did not have to gamble that the wind would turn east, although it would help if it did. Surprise, he also had to stake everything on surprise . . .

He turned to the quartermaster. "Pass the word for my steward, please."

The sound of his voice seemed to break a spell: Southwick swung round to face him from his position by the binnacle; Aitken, just about to go down the ladder to the main deck, stopped expectantly. He turned and walked back to Ramage who said: "I need a dozen steady men. Not topmen. Six for the Brutus and six for the Fructidor.

"We'll put them on board just before sunset. Tell the gunner to give them an hour or two of instruction about mortars. I know they've probably never seen one, but he can explain the theory, and take them through the loading procedure."

Aitken hesitated a moment and Ramage guessed that, like Southwick, the first lieutenant was curious why the Captain had passed the word for his steward. They probably assumed that whatever the reason it was part of putting more men on board the bombs. Well, the pair of them were going to be disappointed.

He looked up and found Silkin waiting. His steward could be profoundly irritating, but he did his job well. Too well, which was why he was irritating: half the time he verged on fussiness.

Ramage shook his head. "Belay that call, Silkin," he said. 'I've changed my mind."

Southwick looked at Aitken with raised eyebrows. The Scotsman began to go down the ladder, deliberately not walking quietly. There's plenty of time, Ramage thought; if I explain everything now, I might have to change it all later on because something else unexpected occurs - like the three frigates.

An hour later, as Ramage watched over the larboard side, making a mental journey through the Tuscan countryside, spotting and identifying various hill towns as the Calypso sailed southwards like a great sheepdog patiently driving two tiny, fat and very slow lambs, a question came to his mind. At first it was like a small patch of mist forming on an autumn evening in a little valley. Then it thickened and expanded to the size of a fog bank.

The question was obvious and simple. So obvious and so simple that he had completely overlooked it. He had walked right up to it and still not seen it. He had discovered that two French frigates were due in Porto Ercole to embark cavalry, foot soldiers and artillery, and then escort the two bomb ketches to Crete. He had been bright enough thus far to wonder why the French thought it necessary to escort the bomb ketches when they knew that the Royal Navy had long since been forced out of the Mediterranean. He had even speculated that the French were frightened that the bomb ketches might be attacked by the Algerine pirates, still occasionally raiding the Italian coasts. He had even - at this point he cursed his own stupidity - wondered if the two bomb ketches were going to Crete to serve as the defences of an anchorage, to save the French building a fort. Then three frigates had come in sight, not two, and he had become absorbed with wondering why there was the extra one.

No, he told himself bitterly, there was not even that excuse. He was lying to himself, like an errant schoolboy trying to avoid half a dozen with the birch by telling a string of lies. There was no excuse. Within moments of reading Renouf's orders telling him to make for Crete he had wondered if the bomb ketches were intended to join a French fleet assembling there. He had even speculated to Southwick that the French fleet and troops might be preparing for a new attack somewhere; a piece of speculation which had drawn from Southwick the sour memory that they had missed the Battle of Aboukir Bay, when Nelson had smashed a French fleet and wrecked Bonaparte's first attack on Egypt.

There he had left it: he had not taken the obvious extra step; the one that would have led him to the next question - the final, main, obvious and vital question which the Admiralty must have answered as soon as possible: exactly where is the French fleet bound?

If they intended an invasion of the Morea, Egypt or the eastern end of the Mediterranean, then Britain was going to have to scrape together a fleet from somewhere, and an army, to drive them out again.

That was the question. What about the answer? It could be anything. The French might be doing just what he had thought of first - using the bomb ketches as defences for an anchorage. The transfer of the bomb ketches might be some whim of a Minister of Marine, and the cavalry and troops being carried by the once two, now probably three frigates, might be a routine replacement. The lack of British ships of war made supplying garrisons by sea easy for the French. Troops died of diseases, and so did horses. The transfer of artillery might also be routine; the garrison did not have any guns, and the lack might now be being made up. Finally the frigates, bombs and troops might be part of some massive operation planned by Bonaparte in complete secrecy.

Ramage had a simple choice: he could act on the assumption that it was a normal change-of-garrison operation, and proceed to do what he could to destroy or capture the frigates. That was just the sort of thing his orders expected him to do. Or he could try to find out whether they were joining a fleet, and its destination, and then sink or capture the frigates.

Renouf knew nothing more than that he was to go to Crete; Ramage was sure of that. If he knew nothing more, then that drunken sot who had been commanding the Brutus would be equally ignorant. It was clear that when the original orders were drawn up for the two bomb ketches while they were still in Brest, it was intended that they should go up to Toulon to get more provisions and water.

That was odd, he thought suddenly, because it added many hundreds of miles to the voyage when they were in fact passing large Spanish naval bases like Cartagena, where they could water and provision. Perhaps the French guessed that the Spanish were so short of everything that a couple of French bomb ketches would get little more than derisory remarks about their odd rig if they visited a Spanish port and asked for stores.

By the time the bombs arrived in Toulon something had happened to make it necessary to give them an escort - not all the way from Toulon to Crete; only from just north of Rome. Was that significant? Probably not; the troops, cavalry and artillery the frigates were to carry to Crete were probably doing garrison duty in Tuscany preventing the sporadic attacks by Italian partisans, and it had dawned on the French that they were not vitally needed in Italy. Perhaps France was so short of men that, for a great operation to be mounted from Crete, soldiers had to be collected from every possible place.

Whichever it was, it fitted - either harbour defence by the bomb ketches and garrison replacement by the troops sailing in the frigates, or preparations for a great invasion, using Crete as the assembly point.

For all that, "either, or" still brought the Fructidor and the Brutus to anchor off Porto Ercole with three frigates moored stern-to the jetty inside the harbour embarking soldiers, frightened horses and field guns. The final question was how could Ramage discover the ultimate destination of the troops and bomb ketches?

Within reach, there were just two people likely to be able to answer the questions: the senior of the French frigate captains, or the senior of the army officers who would be embarking. Even they might not know; in the interests of secrecy, the Ministries of Marine and of War in Paris might only have told them to go to Crete, where the general and admiral commanding the expedition would give them fresh and final orders . . .

There was just a hope that at Porto Ercole the senior navy and army officers would know that Crete was in fact their final destination and that all this was a perfectly normal operation, a rotation of the regular garrison and strengthening of the usual defences.

Ramage eyed the mountains far inland that formed the spine of the Italian peninsula. He needed a group of men who spoke fluent Italian so that they could wander round Argentario without being bothered by the Italians, and fluent enough in French to be able to chat with senior French army or navy officers . . .

Apart from himself, only young Paolo and the seaman Rossi spoke Italian. Rossi's native Genoa was now a French republic, so he would be shot as a traitor if he was caught. That left Ramage and Paolo. Yet the French would strap Paolo to the guillotine the moment they found they had caught not just an aristo but the heir to the kingdom of Volterra.

A strange, high-pitched noise, musical and reedy, was coming from the Brutus; young Martin was playing his flute. It was a more musical version of the kind of flute often played by Italian shepherds. He could remember from the days when he had lived there as a boy how often, when riding across the Tuscan hills, he would gradually become aware that in the distance someone was playing what could well be Pan pipes. The music would begin almost imperceptibly, like warmth from a rising sun. Usually it turned out to be a young boy sitting in the shade of a wild olive tree, playing to himself as he kept an eye on a dozen goats and twice as many kids which played like children, chasing each other - most of them seemed to be twins: did goats never have single kids? He remembered the kids jumping into the air, all four legs stiff, and then running to their mothers and butting against the teats. It was a scene going back to Biblical times and earlier . . . "Blower" Martin, fourth lieutenant, playing his flute with an audience of tanned and tough seamen on board a French prize was neither historic nor romantic; simply unusual. Someone ought to pass round Martin's hat to see how much money they could collect.

He stopped at the quarterdeck rail and held the woodwork, his body rigid. Southwick looked at him in alarm but then did not move because over the years he had seen it happen several times: that was how ideas hit the Captain. After a minute Ramage turned to him and said: "Make the signal for captains to come on board: I want to talk to Wagstaffe and Aitken."