The Ramage Touch

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ramage knew that not only had he made a grave mistake but he had probably killed Paolo, Kenton, Jackson, Rossi and Stafford, and the rest of the men whose names he could not for the moment remember. He had probably killed them all because he must have measured the distance from the harbour entrance to the Feniglia and back wrongly. He was unlikely to have done that, he decided, so he must have relied too much on a chart which he knew could not be accurate to a few hundred yards. Not accurate for longer distances like those, although it would be accurate enough in giving the width between the headlands forming the harbour, or the length of Isolotto . . .

He should have allowed for chart errors of up to a cable. Two hundred yards would have been enough; two hundred yards would mean that at this moment the Calypso would be between that damned French frigate and the Fructidor. Not just between them, but forcing the Frenchman to turn away and fight, ship to ship. The fight would have been the fairest ever fought in the Mediterranean, or anywhere else for that matter, because they were identical ships.

He looked again at the French frigate, her mastheads beginning to tower high fine on the starboard bow, waiting for the tell-tale flap of the luffs and leeches of her sails or the rush of men to sheets and braces that would warn him the moment she began to turn away. Two hundred yards to go, one hundred and seventy-five, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and twenty-five . . . That was curious, it was still about one hundred and twenty-five. . .

"The bomb's swinging! She's swinging!" Southwick was bellowing. In his excitement he slapped his captain on the back. "Oh, just look at her, sir!"

"She's slipped her spring," said Aitken, matter-of-factly. "That's surprised those Frenchmen!"

"Aye, the Fructidor's swinging right across her bow! Will they dare ram the bomb? One of her masts might whip one of their yards out! By God," Southwick shouted, "we'll have them yet!"

Ramage snatched the speaking trumpet from Aitken's hand, put it to his lips and was startled when a roaring voice he did not recognize as his own hurled itself at the seamen at the guns below him.

"Stand by down there!" he bellowed. "There's just a chance we'll save 'em. Starboard guns, there: open fire as the target bears, and keep on firing until she strikes her colours!"

The men cheered and yelled in reply as he handed the speaking trumpet back to Aitken, who said excitedly: "They're beginning to turn away, sir -"

They could turn before they had intended and yet still give the Fructidor a broadside; that much was obvious. But although the race to interpose the Calypso between the frigate and the bomb ketch was over, there was time for a quick sidestep.

He snatched back the speaking trumpet, yelled at the men at the wheel to turn four points to larboard and, speaking trumpet to his mouth, turned again to the men at the guns. "Listen down there!" he roared. "You're going to see that Frenchman for less than a minute, and the range will be about a hundred yards. Aim for the hull, otherwise the Fructidor will get their whole broadside!"

He turned away. Damnation, this was like the Mall with three horses bolting at once: to come round to larboard far enough for the Calypso's starboard-side guns to bear meant that he would have to shave under the Fructidor's stern the moment the guns had fired . . . Still, there was no choice!

The Frenchman was broad on the bow as the Calypso swung one way to bring her guns to bear and the Frenchman turned the other in a desperate last-moment attempt to dodge the broadside they now saw would hit them.

"Here they come!" Ramage found himself roaring into the speaking trumpet and it seemed from all round him there was the popping of muskets as Renwick's Marines fired at the Frenchman's quarterdeck. The 12-pounders thundered in a rippling fire one after the other down the starboard side, but Ramage hardly heard them because of the blood beating in his ears. He saw puffs as the guns fired, and then thick clouds of oily-yellow smoke as the puffs merged and began to stream out of the ports ... An enormous cough, another and then another as the carronades almost beside him fired, flinging the lemon-sized grapeshot into the French ship.

He glimpsed the Fructidor only a few yards away and almost dead ahead. "Hard a' starboard," he bellowed at the men at the wheel.

Smoke and noise - the heavy thudding of roundshot hitting solid wood, the whine of splinters being thrown up in swathes, the bell-like clanging of roundshot ricocheting from metal . . . the Frenchmen had let go their broadside at the Calypso, tit for tat. Now the men were scurrying around reloading and - hell-fire and damnation, any moment the Calypso will be so far round she would be taken a'back - no, the men were spinning the wheel, almost climbing up the spokes in their urgency - and Aitken was standing beside them, looking as calm as if he was just checking that the gillie's gralloching knife was sharp enough before they cleaned the deer he had just shot.

Where was everyone? The French frigate was squaring her yards to run off before the wind, smoke streaming from the larboard gunports as though she was on fire, and the Fructidor was sliding past on the quarter. Every man in the Calypso who was not busy loading the guns or steering the ship was standing at gunports or even perched on the hammock nettings cheering as the frigate swept by.

"I saw young Orsini," Southwick said gruffly. "And Kenton, and the rest of them. No damage to the ketch; I don't think they had any casualties. The Frenchman was more concerned with firing at us."

Ramage nodded and looked away because the old master seemed to want to have a good weep from sheer relief and Ramage felt like joining him. The French frigate was now five hundred yards ahead ... the turn to bring the Calypso's broadside guns to bear had cost her dearly in distance.

"Mr Aitken," he said, "let fall the topgallants, and set the stunsails. Not the courses; I'm not fighting under courses. That Frenchman's lucky they didn't catch fire. We'll cut the stunsails adrift when we get alongside him."

Southwick pointed at the Brutus, which was setting sail. "What's Wagstaffe up to, then?"

Ramage thought for a moment. "Going into Porto Ercole to see what he can find, I suspect, and Kenton will be close in his wake."

Southwick lifted up his quadrant and carefully measured the angle made by the Frenchman's mizentopmasthead. He then looked at his watch and, after putting the quadrant down carefully, noted the angle and the time on the slate. "It'll depend on which of us has the cleanest bottom," he said to no one in particular. "So if he's been growing barnacles in Toulon, we'll beat him providing the Toulon barnacles are bigger than the ones we brought over from the West Indies."

Ramage changed his mind, and to gain a knot or two gave the order to set the fore and main courses, the largest sails in the ship. While they were being let fall he reflected that a stern chase is a long chase ... That had been dinned into him from the days when he was a young midshipman. The frigate's name was Le Furet. The Ferret. He had forgotten to look until this moment, but it showed up well in the telescope. The letters were carefully painted in blue on a red background; indeed, the whole transom was carefully painted. Not at all like the usual French ship of war, especially of the size of a frigate. There was always a shortage of paint in any dockyard, but he knew that in French dockyards these days it was critical, and no French captain was going to spend his own money on the extra few tins of paint that brightened up a ship ... To spend money on gold leaf would be an anti-revolutionary act, he supposed. Anyway, the Furet looked a good deal smarter than most French frigates he had seen. Still, he had a feeling that by the time this day was over he was going to be heartily sick of the sight of the Furet's transom; her captain obviously knew how to get the last quarter of a knot out of his ship.

Southwick picked up his quadrant, twiddled the vernier and, after consulting his watch, noted his findings down on the slate. He pondered for a minute or two and then looked up at Ramage with a cheerful grin. "We've gained a few yards, and we haven't got the stunsails rigged out yet."

By now the courses had been trimmed, the studdingsails (in effect long strips of canvas to be hoisted up alongside each of the squaresails to make them wider, the tops held out by the stunsail booms, which slid out to form extensions of the yards) had been brought up on deck from the sail room and the special halyards were ready.

Aitken took the speaking trumpet while Southwick continued keeping a watch on the Furet.

"Starboard stunsails ready, there!"

The first lieutenant ran his eye over the three bundles now resting on the deck abreast each of the masts.

"Hands aloft rig out the booms!"

The topmen streamed up the rigging and along the yards, sliding out the pole-like booms which they normally had to lift up while they were working on the sails. These booms, now poking out like fishing rods, seemed too flimsy for the job they had to do.

"Haul taut the tacks, and belay!"

Ramage stopped listening to Aitken's sequence of orders as he tried to guess the Furet's destination. For the moment she was obviously intent on escaping, but where would she have gone with the other two frigates and the two bombs, had everything gone the way the French planned? To Crete, of course, but where after that?

What was the Furet's captain intending to do? If he managed to stay ahead of the Calypso until nightfall, he would need to have a lead of a couple of miles or more to stand a chance of dodging in the darkness - unless there was thick cloud. But a clear night with stars meant the Furet's sails would be easily seen by the Calypso's lookouts. Supposing he did escape completely though - which obviously he was trying to do, escape without fighting - where would he go? The next couple of hours might show - by then he would be clear of any possible wind shadow from Argentario, and the Furet would either turn to the west-south-west if he intended going back to Toulon, planning to pass through the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia, or carry on to the south if he intended rounding Sicily and turning eastward towards Crete. Of course, he might make a bolt for Civita Vecchia, now only a few miles to the south along the Italian mainland, hoping to find safety there, but a wily fox never bolted for its lair when the hounds were in really close pursuit . . .

By now the stunsails were set and trimmed, and as the Calypso seemed almost to surge along Southwick said: "The wind's freshening, sir. A cast of the log?"

Ramage shook his head. "It won't make us go any faster. Our only concern is catching up with that blasted frigate - and the angle shown on your quadrant will tell us more exactly than the log."

"Well, we gained a little when you set the courses, but lost it when the Furet set her stunsails - she had them up and trimmed before we did. Now we might be gaining a little, I'm waiting a few minutes for our halyards to settle, and Mr Aitken's busy with the sheets and braces: a foot here and a foot there makes a difference ..."

The Italian mainland, now flattening in the great plain and marsh that led to Rome, was sliding past as though the Calypso was a bird flying south to a warmer climate. The Torre di Buranaccio, where he had first met Gianna, had already dropped below the horizon on the larboard quarter; soon he would be able to see the hill towns of Montalto di Castro and then Tarquinia, standing behind their walls beside the via Aurelia like massive sentries from the days of the Caesars guarding the long road to Rome.

Ramage started as Southwick gave a cross between a bark and a chuckle as he put down his quadrant.

"We've gained a little . . . perhaps a quarter of a ship's length."

"We're not exactly ready to range alongside and board her in the smoke," Ramage said irritably. "The wind hasn't freshened; it's easing if anything."

"Aye, sir," Southwick agreed soberly. "We both have the same sail set, but if that French captain doesn't want to turn and fight, it could take us a couple of days to catch him."

"Obviously he doesn't want to fight," Ramage snapped. "Can't say I blame him: he just saw one of his squadron blow up almost alongside him, and the second ship is probably wrecked."

"But we're still even, sir, ship against ship," Southwick pointed out reasonably.

"Ship against ship," Ramage said sarcastically, "doesn't mean very much unless they're in range of each other."

Southwick knew his captain's temper was getting short because of the frustration of having the Furet out of reach and range ahead of him. He was not a man with enough patience to sail in another ship's wake for very long.

"We need something to surprise him," Southwick said complacently, being himself quite prepared to take a couple of days, gaining inch by inch, providing he could eventually get alongside, or at least within range. "He must have had a surprise when that mortar shell burst in his wake! Still, we need something else."

"Yes, we need Martin sitting on the end of the jibboom playing tunes with his flute," Ramage snarled. "A male siren on the rocks. Or perhaps you'd like to go and make nasty faces at him?"

"Wind might drop, sir," Southwick said. "He might run into a calm patch while we still have a breeze - that'd gain us a few ship's lengths."

"And it might just as easily work the other way, with the wind dropping from astern, so we lose it first and he gains the distance."

"True, sir, very true," Southwick said hastily, recognizing warning symptoms. First the Captain would rub the upper and older of the two scars on his right eyebrow vigorously; then the skin of his nose would seem to get taut and bloodless, as though it was shrinking; then he would have trouble pronouncing the letter "r", turning it into a "w". After this, Southwick knew well, although he had seen it happen only a few times, and usually in frustrating circumstances like these, God help the poor fellow who fell across the Captain's hawse. It was likely to be himself this time, he realized, and wished Aitken would come aft: the more live bait the better . . .

Ramage picked up his telescope and spent the next three or four minutes examining the Furet. Southwick measured the angle of the mizenmast once again and noted the angle and the time on the slate. The small island of Giannutri was fading away on the starboard quarter and already Argentario was beginning to shrink over the horizon astern as though shrivelling in the heat of the sun.

Finally Ramage put down the telescope and walked right aft to the stern-chase ports. Southwick was startled to see him kneeling down and, hands gripping the sides of the port, hang out, staring down at the Calypso's wake. He stayed there for several minutes, hauled himself back in again, picked up his hat, which he had left to one side of the port, and jammed it on his head.

"I want five hundred shot brought up on deck from the shot locker," he told Southwick abruptly. "See to it immediately."

The master promptly passed the order to the bosun's mates, and at once dozens of men left the guns and streamed below.

It might work, Ramage thought. He could, of course, start twenty or thirty tons of water from the casks and pump it over the side, so that the ship, lightened by that much weight, might be able to gain a few yards. If he still lost the race, however, he would run out of water weeks before the period his orders lasted, and he would have to go back to Gibraltar with his tail between his legs, defeated by thirst, not the enemy. He could equally well hoist a few guns over the side - each of the 12-pounders weighed a ton - but for every ton he gained he was weakened by a gun, and it still might not do the trick if the Frenchman copied him. There were dozens of other ways of lightening a ship; the trouble was that every one of them also weakened her fighting ability.

Now the men were coming up from below, each clutching four or five 12-pounder roundshot in their arms.

"It might work," Southwick admitted. "It did for the bomb ketches on the way down to Argentario. But - forgive me asking, sir," he added warily, "what makes you think we're not properly trimmed now?"

The question was a fair one because the ship's trim was the master's responsibility and as provisions and water were consumed he had to make sure that the casks, sacks and barrels were taken from parts of the ship that ensured she remained floating level, to the marks set down by her designer.

"We may well be properly trimmed," Ramage said, "but from the day we captured the ship we've never had anything official to go on, only the references in the French logs noting her draught forward and aft whenever the French master could be bothered to have a look and note it down."

"But she always seems to sail well enough," Southwick protested, feeling that his professional skill was being criticized.

"Yes, she always seems to sail well enough against another British frigate of roughly the same size, but this is the first time we've sailed her against an identical French frigate."

"We don't seem to be doing too badly either," Southwick grumbled. "She hasn't gained a yard on us . . ."

"And we haven't gained a yard on her, either," Ramage said grimly.

"No, sir, but we've spent a season in the Tropics; we've a lot more barnacles than she has, I'm sure."

"I'm not," Ramage said shortly. "The French dockyards are overworked and have next to no materials."

"But what are you going to do now, sir?" Southwick asked anxiously, gesturing at the crowd of seamen now gathering round the mainmast with their arms full of roundshot.

Ramage pointed to a telescope. "Look at the Furet. She's griping. They're having to use the rudder every few moments to keep her on course. You can see the white feathers of water it pulls up, like a hen scratching in the dust."

"But so are we, sir," Southwick said defensively. "A ship always yaws when running like this, and the stunsails are out to starboard. 'Taint as though we're running dead before the wind so we have stunsails set both sides."

"Go on, look," Ramage said firmly. "She's not yawing, she's griping. She's down by the bow. Every time her rudder goes over it stirs up the water like an egg whisk."

He waited until Southwick had the telescope to his eye, and then added: "Now you can see . . . Aft she's floating a foot or more too high; the blade of the rudder isn't deep enough. Instead of turning the ship, it's slowing her up, like a paddle held out sideways. Not much, but it must add up to half a knot. And we're doing the same - I guessed as much and that's why I had a look."

Southwick, still staring through the telescope, muttered in near-disbelief: "There . . . there . . . there . . . and there . . . and there . . ."

At the same time Ramage watched the men at the Calypso's wheel. They turned the wheel a few spokes and let it run back as though they were working in unison with the men at the Furet's wheel.

"We're just the same," Ramage said as Southwick turned away and put down the telescope. "You never get the best out of a ship unless you have a trial of sailing against a sister ship."

"I know," Southwick said miserably, "but I'd have sworn this ship couldn't be sailed any faster than we've sailed her up to now. Thousands of miles . . ."

By now there were a hundred men gathered round the mainmast, each cradling roundshot. A hundred men each weighing an average of, say, eleven stone and holding sixty pounds of shot . . . Ramage struggled with the mathematics. That meant each man totalled 214 pounds, and a hundred of them totalled 21,400 pounds, which divided by 2,240 gave the answer in tons. Nine tons, in fact.

"Distance!" he said curtly to Southwick who, immediately grasping what Ramage had in mind, hurriedly snatched up the quadrant and then noted the angle and the time on the slate.

Ramage picked up the speaking trumpet, which had been left beside the binnacle. "You men holding shot - move over to the lee side."

He waited until the group was close against the bulwarks on the larboard side.

"When I give the word, I want you to walk aft in pairs, up the quarterdeck ladder here on the lee side and go as far aft as possible. You can sit against the taffrail with your shot. Don't drop 'em; I don't want them rolling around the quarterdeck like a children's marble alley. Right, start coming aft!"

He called across to the men at the wheel and the quartermaster, who had overheard the conversation with Southwick and understood the purpose of the experiment: "Once all these men are aft, you might find the ship handles slightly differently. You, quartermaster, watch for it; and you men at the wheel, I want you to feel it through the spokes - or not, as the case may be."

Two by two the barefooted seamen came tramping up the wide treads of the ladder, all of them grinning broadly, and most of them beginning to perspire with the weight of the shot.

They passed Ramage, passed the carronades, and as the first pair reached the taffrail subsided on to the deck with groans. The rest of the men followed and within two or three minutes they had occupied one side of the deck and taken up most of the room round the two aftermost carronades.

Ramage waited a couple of minutes and then walked over to the men at the wheel. "Do you feel any difference?"

Both men nodded their heads eagerly. "Yes, sir, she's a lot lighter to the touch. She always seemed to be wanting to gripe before but now - well, she's almost sailing 'erself."

"S'fact, sir," the quartermaster said. "She ain't yawing now, either." He looked at the wheel and whispered to the two men. "Yes sir, she takes just a quarter of a turn on account of the stunsails up to weather, and then she's as good as steering 'erself."

In a minute or two, Ramage guessed, Southwick would report that the Calypso was beginning to catch up on the Furet ... In the meantime he had most of the guns' crews squatting up here holding roundshot which, the moment they let go of them, would roll back and forth, cracking ankles and spoiling the whole trim once again.

He snatched up the speaking trumpet and bellowed to the men left in the waist of the ship. "Quickly, you men: each grab a hammock and get up here!" He stood there impatiently and suddenly blared: "Don't worry about the blasted hammock cloth - we're expecting an action, not an admiral's inspection."

It was not fair, and anyway the men were quite right because the long hammock cloth - a strip of canvas covering intended to keep the lashed-up hammocks dry - would get in the way of the guns, but the guns' crews could get that clear when they were back at their posts.

As men came running up the quarterdeck ladder with hammocks over their shoulders Ramage called to the boatswain, who was one of them, "Undo the hammock lashings and put in shot, then lash them up into bags, so the shot won't roll all over the place. Stow 'em as far aft as you can."

While the men dropped the shot into the hammocks and joked as they hurried to make up the bags, some of them recognizing their own hammocks by the numbers painted on them and groaning at the thought of scrubbing out the blacking from the shot that was already making the flax look like zebra skin, Ramage was conscious out of the corner of his eye that Southwick seemed to be doing a jig just forward of the binnacle.

"Well," Ramage demanded. "What's this - the beginning of the Helston Floral Dance?"

"Could be, could be, sir," the master said, grinning as he pointed to the slate. "We've caught up a hundred yards - leastways, what I mean is we're now overhauling them." He snatched up his telescope and after examining the Furet said: "Take a look, sir. Three heads along the taffrail, all officers, like starlings on a bough. The third one is using a quadrant. I can almost hear him reporting that the angle is greater . . . and they don't know why . . ."

As soon as the seamen aft put down their shot they returned to their guns, all taking a good look forward as they went down the quarterdeck ladder. Normally when serving at the guns their view forward was limited by the after side of the fo'c'sle, but now, probably for the first time in their lives, they had had a good look at the opposition; a captain-on-the-quarterdeck eye view, Ramage thought, just as he realized that the weight of a hundred men was now moving forward again, leaving only the roundshot. Too late to worry now . . .

Guns loaded and run out on both sides; the starboard side manned for the moment. It would be nice to have enough men to fight both sides at once but he doubted if there was a ship in the navy with a full complement that could do that. Anyway, the Calypso's men were now so well trained that if he had the chance to get both broadsides fired into the French, the enemy would think both sides were manned.

He would attack the Frenchman's larboard side. With the wind from the north-west and on this course, it meant that if the Frenchman tried to bolt he would have to turn away to leeward - and the Calypso would be there to stop him.

By now Aitken was back on the quarterdeck, looking with amusement at the white bags covering the larboard after corner of the quarterdeck.

"Looks as though it's done the trick, sir," he commented. "But it's going to be a pounding match once we get alongside."

"Pound her well and then board her. We're short of officers to lead boarding parties."

"Aye, sir: Wagstaffe, Kenton, Martin, Orsini - we could do with them now."

The Furet's hull was entirely black: the only colours were the dull buff paint used on the masts and yards, and the inside of her gunports, which were red: that was traditional. And the name on the transom. The Revolution, Ramage thought, seemed to be against colour. Perhaps if equality was a colour, it was black, while fraternity was buff. The French Navy seemed to have run out of colours when they came to liberty - unless you include the blood red used inside the gunports . . . The Royal Navy issued no more colours than that; but neither did their writing paper have "Liberté" and "Egalité" printed on the top. It was hard to imagine their Lordships in the Admiralty administering a navy with a tree of liberty planted in the forecourt in Whitehall.

He stopped his train of thought for a moment and reached for his telescope. It was curious the amount of water suddenly flowing over the side from the Furet's scuppers and scattering into droplets like smoke as the wind caught it. They must be wetting the decks to put down more sand in anticipation of battle. There was enough heat in the sun to dry the planking very quickly, but one would have thought a few buckets of water slung over them from a tub would be enough: with this amount of water the sand must be sluicing over the side too.

So much water, he thought, putting the telescope to his eye, that they must be using the deckwash pumps. No, it could not be that: both ships were sailing too fast for deckwash pumps to draw, even if lead piping went down the side to the water instead of canvas hose.

Hell fire! The water was not just a spray now; it was running in a stream through the lee side scuppers - in spurts, rather, like blood pulsing when a man lost a leg. The Calypso's pump dale was also on the lee side, a wooden trough which carried the bilge water over the side from the great chain pump.

It must be the chain pump. He pictured many men turning the big cranked handle to rotate the sprocket wheel which turned the endless chain and brought each leather disk up the pipe casing with its quota of water, emptying it into the trough of the pump dale as it came over the top and started its downward journey again.

Then he cursed himself for his stupidity: the French captain was trying to lighten his ship in just the way Ramage himself had considered starting fresh-water casks, throwing a few guns over the side and jettisoning a couple of the boats. Very sensibly the French captain had decided to sacrifice the fresh water, so that now there were thousands of gallons of water in the Furet's bilge which his men were busy pumping out. The Calypso's bilges were pumped every morning, on Ramage's orders; not because she had a leak but because water left in the bilge soon began to stink. He had been in some ships of the line commanded by men who should know better whose bilges smelled like the Fleet Ditch at a midsummer noon. Anyway the chain pump leathers wanted wetting daily if they were not to dry and crack.

Southwick looked round at him and nodded cheerfully. His latest reading with the quadrant showed the Calypso still gaining. "That ship is about five hundred yards ahead of us - from our jibboom to his taffrail, sir."

"It's still going to take a long time to make up that distance," Ramage said gloomily. "Half an hour, anyway. Still, the men can have their dinner; it's long overdue."

It was as if the Furet was towing the Calypso, Ramage thought irritably; despite his recent gain, the distance hardly changed now - not perceptibly, anyway; just two identical frigates surging southwards with a quartering wind, one flying the Tricolour, the other British colours. The Calypso was by far the smarter, Ramage thought; but paint did not make a ship fast nor did scrubbed decks stop barnacles and weeds growing on the bottom. No doubt the copper sheathing was by now wafer-thin in places, no longer keeping the growth away, and it was equally certain that many thin sheets would have ripped off, leaving only the stubby sheathing nails sticking out like the heads of pins pressed into a pin cushion.

He would give anything to see the face of the Furet's captain, just to know what the man looked like. The Frenchman knew his business, that much was certain. Ramage would bet that the fellow had learned his profession under the old navy and, having no aristocratic attachments (and no enemies to accuse him falsely), had received well-merited promotion. Ramage felt that if he could catch a glimpse of the man's face he might be able to guess what his next move was likely to be, like a prizefighter watching his opponent's eyes for a warning of the next punch.

He lifted his telescope and saw the three heads facing aft at the taffrail, obviously watching the Calypso racing along in the Furet's wake. In the Tropics one would expect to see flying fish making their graceful waltzes over the wavetops, but they were nearly twenty degrees too far north . . .

Suddenly men were climbing up the Furet's starboard shrouds, going to the stunsail booms at the ends of the yards. Perhaps the French captain knew a trick to make them draw better. Curious that so much water was still pouring through the scuppers on the lee side - the men working the pumps must be getting tired.

"How long ago did you take the next to last altitude?" he asked Southwick, who consulted his slate and then looked at his watch.

"Seven minutes, sir. I've been taking one every four minutes."

He had first noticed the pumps going just before Southwick took that sight. Say eight minutes. That was a long time to have the men pumping at that rate, because there was no doubt they were making that cranked handle spin, probably with a couple of bosun's mates standing over them with starters . . . Suddenly his thoughts froze as if a highwayman had jabbed him in the stomach with a pistol and demanded: "Your money or your life."

The Furet's pumps were going, and now there were men gathered at the starboard end of each of her yards, about to do something with the stunsails. What trick was that captain up to? No answer, no hint of a reason, came to mind.

"Stand by sheets and braces," he snapped at Aitken, who snatched up the speaking trumpet and bellowed through it, although he was clearly startled by so unexpected an order, which would sacrifice the Calypso's stunsails and booms.

"Stand by at the larboard guns - yes, larboard, blast it!"

Again Aitken bellowed as he repeated the order, while Southwick hurriedly snatched up his quadrant and once again moved the vernier a fraction, noted the time and wrote the figures on the slate. All this Ramage saw only from the corner of his eye because he was watching the Furet through the telescope again.

Suddenly the head of the Furet's maintopgallant stunsail dropped a few feet and then streamed forward along the starboard side, flogging and twisting like the tail of a kite, and a moment later the rest of the stunsails were cut adrift, canvas and rope threshing in unison. She was going to turn suddenly to starboard, Ramage was certain of that and he was going to turn first to cut her off. If he was wrong he would lose a few hundred yards, but he had to gamble.

He shouted the order to Aitken and pointed at the quartermaster. An eight-point turn meant the men had to spin the great wheel several revolutions, and the quartermaster crouched ready over the binnacle, watching the compass and the dogvanes as well as glancing up at the luffs of the sails, which were beginning to flap as they lost the wind, although the yards were already being braced up.

"Larboard guns to fire as soon as they bear on the target," Ramage said to Aitken, who again shouted the order through the speaking trumpet, although from the sound of the Scotsman's voice and the look on his face he probably thought his captain had suddenly gone mad because the Furet was still sailing on the same course with the Calypso astern of her.

Then the Calypso's bow began to swing to starboard, the Furet seeming to slide away over to the larboard bow, like an ice-skater . . . Ramage had guessed wrongly. Already the Calypso's sails were slatting overhead as seamen struggled with the sheets and tacks controlling the sails and braces which trimmed the yards, the stunsails tearing adrift and the stunsail booms breaking with a noise like fresh carrots snapping.

The guns' crews, having raced from one side of the ship to the other, busied themselves with side-tackles, train tackles and trigger lines. The gun captains stood ready with the trigger lines slack in their hands; second captains checked the powder in the pans and waited the order to cock the locks.

Ramage opened his mouth to give the order that would bring the Calypso back into the Furet's wake when the French frigate's transom disappeared, suddenly narrowing as gradually Ramage saw the whole length of the ship's starboard side appear: gunports open, stunsails slatting like streamers from each yard, sails flattened and fluttering as the yards were hurriedly braced sharp up. Now the two ships were racing along side by side, perhaps two hundred yards apart, both heading west, both with sails flogging as men struggled to trim them, and from forward in the Calypso came the first bronchitic coughs as three forward guns fired. A red eye winked once abreast the Furet's foremast, followed by three more further aft. Smoke began to stream from the ports and Ramage felt a heavy thump nearby as a roundshot crashed into the Calypso's hull.

Rapidly, because the ship had turned fast and suddenly brought the enemy into view, the rest of the Calypso's guns fired in a ripple of thunder, and the guns rumbled back in recoil, the men poised for them to stop so they could begin the ritual of sponging and reloading.

More of the French guns winked and smoked; behind him and to one side Ramage heard the crack-crack-crack of the Marines' muskets as they tried to shoot down the officers and the men at the wheel on the Furet's afterdeck.

He noted that the Furet's stunsail booms had all carried away, snapped by the long strips of sail blowing forward and wrapping round the braces, which would jam in the blocks when they tried to trim the yards.

The Calypso's fourth 12-pounder on the larboard side suddenly spun off its carriage, and a moment later Ramage heard a loud clang and a shriek of pain: a French roundshot had hit and dismounted it.

By now all the rest of the guns had been reloaded. Steadily each fired its second round at the Furet and Ramage, with nothing to do but await the outcome of the pounding, examined the French ship.

They were taking their time getting the sails trimmed; so much so that the Calypso was slowly drawing ahead. The Furet seemed to be heeled to larboard - but naturally, she was on the starboard tack. But - now she seemed to be heeled to starboard; in fact she was rolling, and rolling heavily enough to overcome the press of sails to leeward. They were rapidly clewing up the courses - but why reduce speed at a time like this? Now the topgallants were being furled. And the topsails.

Her gunports seemed to be nearer the water than one would expect, too. Then Ramage turned open-mouthed to Southwick, who was now standing beside him, and both men exclaimed simultaneously: "She's sinking!"

"Aye, we must have had a lucky shot," Aitken cried jubilantly but Ramage said: "No, they've had the chain pump going for the past ten minutes, but I didn't realize what was happening."

The Calypso had fired another broadside before Ramage noticed that several seconds had passed since the last French gun had been fired. He told Aitken to pass the order to cease fire.

"Watch her colours," he told Southwick, and then snapped at Aitken: "Stand by to heave-to and be ready to hoist out boats. Renwick, stand by with your men. I'll be calling away boarding parties in a few minutes."

He turned to Aitken. "Clew up the courses - use men from the guns if you need 'em because the topgallants will be next."

There was nothing more dangerous and unnecessary than fighting with too much sail set; topsails were quite enough, giving complete control of the ship, and keeping the canvas high enough above the guns so that the muzzle flash would not start fires. For the first time in his life, he realized, he had been forced to fight under all plain sail. At least, he had stunsails and all plain sail set to the topgallants when he had to fight, because the Furet suddenly bore up ... Now the men were busy cutting away the torn stunsails and halyards and clearing the booms.

The French frigate was sinking all right: she had that slow, ponderous and ominous roll of a ship with many tons of water slopping around inside her, sluicing first to one side and then to the other. In a few minutes it would be too risky to put the Calypso alongside her in case she rolled so much that their yards locked together. Indeed, the way she was going, the whole ship might well capsize.

"They're trying to heave-to," Southwick said, "but I think the foretopsail braces have been cut. Ah, down they come! She's struck her colours, sir!"

Ramage was almost numbed by the speed of events. What had started off as a regular battle was turning into a scrap-bag of different experiences. And Southwick was right, the Furet had been trying to heave-to - what in God's name was going on now? He swung his telescope along her deck. Men were slashing at ropes with axes - several of them chopping with tomahawks as though frantically trying to drive home nails with hammers.

Suddenly the main yard slewed round drunkenly and the foretopsail yard, its halyard obviously let go at the run, the lifts parting, came crashing down across the foredeck. The rest of the sails and yards began to drop, swing, cant or flog as the men on deck slashed through sheets and braces, bowlines and tacks, halyards and lifts.

"We'll heave-to on the larboard tack, if you please, Mr Aitken," Ramage said, "and I want boats hoisted out." He looked at the Furet again. "Make sure the ship's company have pistols or muskets; we're going to have more than two hundred prisoners on board in an hour or so - less, probably. If she sinks, we'll need to sling over hammocks for the survivors to hold on to until we can fish them out. Not a good day for hammocks," he added, gesturing to those used as bags to hold the roundshot. At that moment one of the masthead lookouts hailed that a xebec which he thought he had earlier seen leaving from the direction of Porto Ercole was now catching up fast and seemed to be flying a flag or pendant from the upper end of the yard.