The Ramage Touch

CHAPTER FOUR

Ramage walked round the Dix-Huit de Fructidor with Aitken and was impressed by what he saw. The ketch was about sixty feet long, with both masts set well aft. The mainmast was almost amidships, the mizenmast halfway between it and the taffrail. Just forward of each mast, though, there was a circular hatchway, looking like an enormous cartwheel lying flat on the deck and inset several inches. On top of this, instead of spokes and an axle, there was a thick circular wooden disc, or bed, and on this bed was mounted a large mortar. The circular bed revolved on the hatchway, or wheel, so that the mortar could be trained all round the compass.

In fact great care had to be taken to make sure that a mortar shell did not damage any rigging or the masts, so that effectively each could be trained through about 130 degrees on either side - from twenty degrees ahead to 150 degrees on the quarter. Then neither the mortar shell itself nor the muzzle flash would do any damage.

Aitken pointed at the bed on which the mortar revolved. "They must turn it with handspikes when they want to train it round."

Ramage saw that the bed was constructed differently from the usual type built into a British bomb ketch because the French constructors had to adapt the already-completed hull of a merchant ship. Ramage looked at the paint on the woodwork and said: "It's more likely that they lock the mortar on a bearing, probably forty-five degrees, and then to train it they turn the whole ship by putting a spring on the cable. That would be a more accurate way of aiming the gun. I wonder if this one has ever been fired in anger?"

The first lieutenant shook his head doubtfully. "I can't remember ever hearing of the French using bomb ketches - not in this way, anyway. This would be the first time. Interesting things, aren't they, sir?" he commented. "Must be the very devil to elevate a mortar accurately."

"You don't. It's like hitting a ball with a stick. You can hit it hard from underneath so that it goes high in the air but no great distance, or you can hit it on the side so it flies lower and flatter but covers the same horizontal distance. In each case you usually correct your aim with the second shot. It's the same with a mortar. You train the gun in the right direction with the spring on the cable - at a fort, for instance. Then, with the barrel pointing on the bearing of the fort you have to hurl the shell over the walls and into the middle. You do that by increasing or decreasing the amount of powder used to launch the shell. Like a child's peashooter, in fact. A boy points the peashooter in the general direction of his target and controls the parabola of the pea by blowing harder or softer."

"So the most important items on board a bomb ketch are a good telescope to spot the fall of the shell and a large scoop to measure the powder," Aitken said with a grin. "As we have a bring-'em-near and scoops to spare it seems a pity that we have to scuttle these two vessels, sir."

"It does," Ramage said thoughtfully, "but a bomb ketch's drawback is that it's not much use for anything else. These two go to windward like haystacks. They'd never keep us in sight for more than six hours, let alone stay in company, and we have a long way to go."

Still, it shocked Aitken's thrifty soul to scuttle or burn two well-built ships. There was no chance of treating them as prizes - with Malta in French hands the nearest prize court was in Gibraltar, a thousand miles away, and both vessels would be recaptured long before reaching it because the Mediterranean was now swarming with French and Spanish ships.

" 'Tis a pity we can't use them to bombard somewhere," Aitken said almost fretfully. "Anyway, could we not have some practice, sir? I've never seen one o' these shells burst. I think it's knowledge I ought to have," he added hopefully. "And the men, too."

"It's knowledge you ought to have already," Ramage said with mock severity, having served in a bomb ketch for a brief three months when a young midshipman, although she had never fired a shot.

"I know, sir," Aitken said contritely. "I was hoping that. . ."

"You're like a child with a new toy," Ramage said amiably, going to the ship's side and gesturing to Aitken to climb down into the waiting cutter so that they could return to the Calypso. One of the few advantages of being the senior officer was that you were the last to enter and the first to leave a boat, and as he had always been impatient, he welcomed promotion.

Back in his cabin and sprawled in the one comfortable chair, his sword and hat tossed on the settee, Ramage quietly and amiably cursed Aitken. The Scot was a fine seaman, extremely brave, with a whimsical sense of humour and an extraordinary devotion to Ramage which had recently led him to decline the command of a frigate (and thus promotion to the post list) so that he could stay as the first lieutenant of the Calypso. But this product of Perth - of Dunkeld, anyway, which was just to the north, alongside the Tay - had unintentionally jabbed a finger on a tender spot.

Since he had ordered the Marine sentry to drag Renouf away after he had fainted, Ramage had been trying to make up his mind about the two bomb ketches. Having read the French orders, he now knew what they were supposed to be doing, and all the Frenchmen were on board the Calypso, guarded by Marines. Even the Brutus'scommanding officer had eventually been sobered up with the help of several buckets of sea water hurled by a couple of gleeful British seamen.

The French plans could be wrecked by burning or scuttling the ketches, but for the moment young Paolo was temporarily in command of the Fructidor, striding up and down the tiny quarterdeck in his second-best uniform, dirk hanging at his waist, telescope tucked under his arm, and trying to keep his prize crew of half a dozen men busy coiling ropes and swabbing the decks. Aitken had forbidden him to start the men scrubbing and holystoning, though the planking was as stained as the floor of a bankrupt wine shop.

The Calypso's new fourth lieutenant, William Martin, was temporarily prizemaster of the Brutus, and he too had been dissuaded from setting his men to work to remove a year or two's grease and wine stains. Ramage thought that Martin was settling in well - apart from his confounded flute. It was hardly surprising that his nickname was "Blower"; he must have lungs like a blacksmith's bellows.

"Blower" Martin had joined the ship at Gibraltar, replacing a bag o' wind called Benn who had taken only the voyage from Jamaica to the Rock to decide that the Calypso was not for him. It was not really the poor fellow's fault... Benn, something of a sea lawyer, had been one of the admiral's favourites in Jamaica, and being promoted from a midshipman in the flagship to fourth lieutenant (and no one's favourite) in a frigate had been a shock.

Ramage still missed Baker. When they had captured the island of Curaçao he had a good set of officers: William Aitken was first lieutenant, Baker second, Wagstaffe third and young Kenton fourth, with Renwick commanding the Marine detachment. Considering that the Calypso herself had not been engaged, but only a boarding party, the casualties had been heavy - himself bowled over with a musket ball in the left forearm and a scalp wound, Renwick with a ball in the right shoulder, and Baker killed outright. So Aitken had remained first lieutenant, he had made Wagstaffe second, Kenton third, and this elegant young nincompoop Benn had been sent across from the Queen by the commander-in-chief as the new fourth. He was, he made it quite clear to all and sundry, one of Admiral Foxe-Foote's favourites.

Ramage was not sure what had gone on in the gunroom during the Calypso's Atlantic crossing, but Benn had been quick to ask for permission to leave the ship on arriving in Gibraltar, and Aitken, when asked by Ramage about what was a very unusual request, merely smiled and said he supported it. So Admiral Foxe-Foote's favourite had left the ship and thrown himself on the mercy of the port admiral at Gibraltar in what Ramage soon discovered was, for Benn, a very unwise move.

When Ramage had reported to the port admiral next day and asked for a replacement, the admiral had bellowed (he rarely spoke in anything less): "Count yourself lucky to have got rid of that lapdog of Admiral Foote's. Wonder you accepted him. Still, your fellows made his life a misery - and now I'm landed with him. There's no commanding officer I dislike enough to inflict with him, so he goes back to England as a passenger by the next ship and Their Lordships can find him a berth - if they confirm his promotion. Now you want a replacement, eh?"

Ramage had agreed politely that the Calypso stood in need of a fourth lieutenant.

"What happened to your original one?" the admiral demanded.

"Promoted to third, sir."

"What happened to the third, then?"

"Promoted to second."

"And the second ?"

"Killed in action, sir."

"Hmm. So you can't be as bad as your late fourth lieutenant implied. He told me you were always changing officers. I'm asking because you are going to be landed with one of my. favourites. He's a good lad, passed for lieutenant five months ago, plays a flute -"

"Aflute, sir?"

"Yes, you know, a hollow stick with holes drilled in it. You blow into it with your mouth like this." The admiral gave a passable imitation of an old dowager sucking a bitter lemon. "Very tuneful."

"Er - I'm just wondering, sir," Ramage said warily, "if this young man really is suited to a frigate: after all, it -"

The admiral roared with laughter and slapped the table in front of him with a hand the size of a leg of mutton. "Damme, Ramage, if you don't have the sheepish look of someone trying to jilt the parson's daughter! Don't fret - this lad's a favourite o' mine because he's good and because his father is the master shipwright at the Chatham yard. He built his own skiff when he was eight and rowed all the way to Sheerness on its maiden voyage." The admiral looked directly at Ramage. "I have fresh orders for you from Their Lordships, and I know what they are. I want you to take this lad because he can learn a lot from you - if he lives long enough."

"Those sort of orders, sir?"

"What? Oh no, I'm thinking of the lad. He's too keen, if anything. You've learned already there are two kinds of keen officers - those who get killed in a blaze of glory, and those who survive in a blaze of glory. I see new hair growing over a pink patch on your scalp, there are a couple of scars over your right eyebrow, and you're holding your left arm stiffly, so you've been wounded a few times - unless you were careless when getting out of some trollop's bed. I'd say you haven't made up your mind yet - or fate hasn't, rather - exactly which of the two you are. If you survive, and young 'Blower' Martin does, too, I hope he'll go a long way with you."

"Blower" Martin had since proved to be a very capable and popular young officer: his nickname was intended to tease because he could make a flute do almost everything except actually talk, and many an evening as the Calypso struggled eastward along the Spanish coast against light head winds young Martin had started playing with perhaps a couple of people listening, and ended up with nearly every off-watch seaman in the ship squatting nearby, perched on guns or just lying back on the deck planking. Sometimes they danced, applauding themselves between tunes.

Thin-faced with wavy brown hair, slightly built and nervous and jerky in manner, Martin seemed out of place in uniform - until you watched him on deck. His eyes were never still. They would run along the horizon, up to the luffs of the topsails, along sheets and braces, to the compass card . . . The restless eyes of a true seaman, someone unlikely ever to be caught by a white squall, a badly trimmed sail, a stuck compass card, or an enemy ship sneaking over the horizon. Now, after not more than a few days, he had his own command for a day or so.

Like Paolo, he had to make the best of a prize at anchor, but that would be exciting enough. Ramage recalled the first time he had ever been sent off in command of a prize as a young midshipman. For a few hours he felt the greatest sense of freedom that he could ever remember - but the feeling had lasted only until sunset. Then the prospect of a long, dark night had brought doubts and fears . . . confidence had vanished, black clouds on the horizon looked like the outriders of the most terrible storm, the sea had suddenly become vast and the prize had shrunk. His confidence returned with daylight, and he found he had learned his first real lesson in leadership - that it was a lonely business, but no more difficult in the dark.

Lonely, but exhilarating: here he was sitting in an armchair in the coach of a frigate he had captured and now commanded, and he was back in the Mediterranean with the kind of orders he had always dreamed of getting. They said, in effect, that for four months you sail round the Mediterranean and sink, burn or destroy everything that presents itself. . .

An idea flitted across his mind and he took out his keys as he went to the desk and removed the canvas bag in the locked drawer. The neck of the bag had several brass grommets worked into it, so that the line passing through them could close it up. Inside was a small ingot of lead weighing three or four pounds - enough to sink the bag and its contents if it was thrown over the side in an emergency. Some captains preferred a wooden box suitably weighted and drilled with holes, but he liked a bag: it was easier to throw and more certain to sink. There was the story of a captain who threw the box containing all his secret papers into the sea but forgot to lock it so that the lid popped open when the lead weight sank it just as the enemy boarding party approached. The signal book, the private signals for three months and his order book had all floated to the surface, where they were fished out by the French. The captain had been court-martialled as soon as the French exchanged him, and dismissed the service. The Admiralty did not give you a second chance where secret papers were concerned . . .

He took out his orders and read them again. They had been worded very carefully by Their Lordships, who knew only too well that most officers went over them searching for loopholes which would give an excuse for doing either more or less than was written. Ramage considered that there were two aspects to a set of orders - the wording and the spirit. You could ignore the precise wording and act in the spirit, though if you failed you were court-martialled on the precise wording. He ran a finger along the appropriate lines . . . yes, these orders had a loophole.

An appropriate word, loophole: it meant the slot or loop in the wall of a fortress through which you could fire down at the enemy, whether using a bow and arrow or a musket. Or, in this case, a bomb ketch. The orders had a loophole big enough for two bomb ketches to sail through because Their Lordships referred only to "the enemy" without specifying (as they usually did) "enemy ships and vessels". He folded the single sheet, slid it back into the canvas bag, pulled the drawstring tight, replaced the bag in the drawer and turned the key.

"Pass the word for Mr Aitken," he called to the sentry. It was time for the Calypso to sail under French colours again - or at least stay at anchor under them. There was time for them all to learn more about firing mortars. French shells, French powder . . . plenty of target practice at no expense to Their Lordships; the gunner would have no forms to fill in though this would not stop the miserable wretch grumbling; he grumbled in the same way that a damaged cask dripped . . . There were no villages within ten miles of this stretch of beach; the nearest French were probably at the little fort of La Rocchette - if they bothered to garrison it. There might be a few Italian fishermen or hunters in the area, but whoever they were, French or Italians, they would not become alarmed at seeing ships with French flags firing on to deserted beaches in what was obviously target practice. A passing cavalry might pause and watch the fall of shot, and no doubt comment on the Navy's skill with mortars, or lack of it.

Lieutenant William Martin was just twenty-three years old, celebrating his birthday on the day he joined the Calypso. He celebrated it quietly, keeping the fact to himself, because no one in his right mind joining a new ship as the most junior lieutenant would announce it was his birthday; that would be asking for everything in the history of gunroom practical jokes to be played on him.

Twenty-three. Eight years at sea as a captain's servant, then midshipman, and then he had passed for lieutenant. Not a brilliant pass (not that they gave marks) but he was one of only three that passed out of the nine hopefuls presenting themselves at Gibraltar to the specially convened board of four captains. All four captains knew his father; all would no doubt be taking their ships into Chatham at some time or another, requiring work done in the dockyard. All would no doubt, expect favours from his father as a result of passing his son.

All four, William Martin thought with satisfaction, would be disappointed, because he had not told his father their names. He was not ungrateful, but when he discovered from the other midshipmen the kind of questions they had been asked and the answers they had given, he knew he would have passed whether or not he was the son of the master shipwright at Chatham. None of the captains had offered him a berth as a lieutenant, so he owed them nothing. He had had to wait another three years, serving as a master's mate, until the Calypso gave him a chance and now he was serving with Mr Ramage he was prepared to admit the wait had been worth it. They had not done anything very much up to now, but the gunroom gossip was that Mr Ramage's orders were to make as much trouble in the Mediterranean as possible in four months, which was like giving a bull his own china shop.

Peter Kenton, the third lieutenant, although a year younger had served with Mr Ramage in the West Indies and just about worshipped him. So did Wagstaffe, the second. Mr Aitken was remote and did not mix much and certainly rarely revealed his feelings unless he was angry. But it was obvious that he respected the captain, and Mr Aitken was the kind of man that most people in turn respected. Yet Mr Ramage was hot-tempered, impatient, had a caustic tongue, and obviously did not stand fools gladly. The lads told some remarkable stories about Admiral Foxe-Foote, the commander-in-chief at Jamaica and a fool among fools.

Apparently Mr Ramage had rescued an Italian marchesa from somewhere near by, and Paolo Orsini, the Calypso's only midshipman, was her nephew. Well, Orsini was a bright and eager youngster. Some of the men who had helped rescue her were still serving with Mr Ramage and, according to Southwick (who also knew her), these seamen had formed themselves into a special guard, without Mr Ramage knowing it, and now they also kept an eye on young Orsini, half because they knew how upset the Marchesa would be if anything happened to the boy, but also because they seemed to regard the Captain, the Marchesa and Orsini as a family to which they owed their loyalty. It sounded a bit like some Caesar with a - what was it called, he had learned it at school? Praetorian guard? Something like that.

It was all a long way from Rochester. This stretch of Tuscan coast was beautiful, with the big rounded hills becoming more pointed and mountainous as they went further inland. He had grown up amid the flat marshy land on either side of the River Medway; he had been a boy of the saltings, trapping wild duck over the marshes and bringing home sea kale which they were thankful to boil as vegetables, because there was never enough money in a family that included three brothers and four sisters.

His father had let him roam in the dockyard; he had watched many a 74-gun ship grow from a baulk of timber until it was a great thing of beauty and menace sliding down the ways to the cheers of hundreds of people, launched with a bottle of port wine. Frigates, sloops - aye, even some bomb ketches - had been built and launched at Chatham, but no launching had excited him more than that of the Bellerophon. There was, of course, a 74-gun ship called the Bellerophon, better known to her men as the Billy Ruff'n, but his Bellerophon had been seven feet long, a cross between a punt and a skiff. He had made her from scraps of timber and copper rivets and roves which he had cadged from the shipwrights.

His father and the shipwrights had prepared a surprise for him: they had taken over one of the vacant building slips, carried the skiff to it overnight and fitted it on to a small, weighted carriage which, when a line was jerked, would run down into the water and launch the skiff. One Saturday morning at the midday break he launched the Bellerophon, tossing a tankard of good Kentish ale over her bow as he named her, and going red with embarrassment as she slid down the ways and the shipwrights gave him and the skiff each three cheers and a tiger. And then, with the Bellerophon floating in the water, he had suddenly realized that his father was still standing there with his men and they were all grinning. It was then he remembered he had built the boat but forgotten to make oars.

Then, from behind a nearby shed, a shipwright had brought a pair of oars and given them to his father, who had presented them to him amid even more cheers. They were beautiful oars, made from ash and perfectly balanced, with strips of copper sheathing protecting the tips of the blades. With that he had rowed round to Hoo, thankful that it was nearly high water so that he could get the skiff up to the stretch of gritty beach in front of their house - at low water several hundred yards of smelly mud separated them from the river - and his mother, admiring the boat, had agreed that next day he could miss church and take half a loaf and a piece of cheese and row down the river towards Sheerness.

His eldest brother, in a burst of enthusiasm, had said he could borrow his gun and have some heavy shot so that he could try for a duck or two. Early on Sunday, the Medway still misty and the sun not yet up, he had rowed out, passing the old and new ships of the line, frigates and transports lying on moorings, and the ancient forts of red brick and of grey stone. He had planned to start off just before the top of the tide and carry the ebb all the way, resting to eat his bread and cheese at slack water, and start back with the first of the flood. And that was what he had done. He had rowed along the high-banked channels of the saltings and often let the ebb drift the boat along - so that it slowly grounded a few yards from some ducks dabbling away, tails in the air, in their eternal hunt for food. Slowly he had collected his trophies - the banks seemed to muffle the heavy blam of the gun firing, so that within fifteen minutes or so ducks had settled again. By the time the flood took him back to Hoo he had seven plump duck lying on the bottom boards, and a heap of fresh sea kale to go with them. His eldest brother's only comment as he took the gun back was that he might have plucked the birds while he waited for the tide to turn ...

Although he had enjoyed rowing his skiff, he had found equal pleasure in going over the slight rise of hill to Hoo church on a Thursday afternoon to hear the organist practising for the Sunday service: there he had discovered his love for music. The organist, at first surprised and then pleased to find the young boy always sitting quietly at the back of the church, had taught him to read music and, guessing he would go to sea as soon as he was old enough, suggested that the flute was the instrument for him to learn. They had discussed the violin - but varying climates and long voyages, humidity and high temperatures would warp the wood and snap the strings, and he would never be able to carry enough as spares. The flute was small, easily carried, durable and, more important, it made pleasing music, So he had learned the flute and he had gone to sea ... and here he was standing on the quarterdeck of a French bomb ketch, a commission officer by the age of twenty-three.

More important was the fact that he was one of Captain Ramage's officers. Few captains had had more of their actions described in the London Gazette, and in his imagination Martin saw himself back in the old house at Hoo, his father listening to his exploits, and he would be able to say casually, for the benefit of his brothers, and with an airy wave of the hand: "But you probably read about that in the Gazette ..."

Martin glanced round the Brutus'sdeck and saw that his half dozen men had done everything possible to tidy up the ketch, given that the first lieutenant had forbidden any scrubbing or polishing of the corroded brasswork with brick dust. That was a clear indication that Captain Ramage intended to scuttle or burn both ships, and although it was disappointing for a young lieutenant who could reasonably have expected to be given the command if the Brutus was being sent back to Gibraltar as a prize, it made sense. There were so many French ships about these days that they would be lucky to cover five hundred miles before being captured . . .

On the other side of the Calypso, whose gun port lids were still closed and whose guns had their muzzles sealed by tompions with canvas covers, or aprons, over the flintlocks to keep out the damp of the night, the Fructidor was a ship of frustration as far as Paolo Orsini, a midshipman in the Navy of His Britannic Majesty, was concerned. His half dozen men, working under Thomas Jackson, had sluiced the decks with the only deck-wash pump in the ship, one whose leathers were shrunk and splitting from disuse and needed wiping carefully with tallow before they could be induced to suck, let alone pump. They had coiled all the falls of the halyards, and then whipped some ropes' ends. More tallow had been wiped into the pawls of the windlass; a bored William Stafford had worked a couple of Turk's heads on the tiller using line he had found in the French bosun's store. That was all Mr Aitken would allow; he said it was a waste of time and effort to do anything else with the ships.

Paolo put down his telescope by the binnacle and walked to the forward mortar. It was a strange weapon - so stubby, like a cannon with most of the barrel sawn off, and the trunnions at the breech. The inside of the barrel, the bore (the first section into which the shell was slid), was like the inside of a bottle with its bottom knocked off to form the muzzle. The gunner said the gun was the equivalent of the British 10-inch sea service mortar, and certainly with a muzzle ten inches in diameter it was a formidable-looking weapon. He peered down the bore and could just see where it narrowed into the chamber at the bottom, like the neck of a bottle. That held the gunpowder charge which would launch the mortar shell into the great parabola that should end on the enemy's head.

The whole mortar was fitted on to something that could be mistaken for a solid cartwheel lying on its side. He had been down below and seen how this great wheel - in effect the base -was supported by under-deck stanchions which spread the weight of the mortar and the shock of its recoil over several extra floors and stringers, and the deck beams were twice as thick as normal.

The "cartwheel" had the mortar bed resting on it. This was a thick but flat rectangular wooden block with a hole in the middle of the underside. This fitted on to what would be the hub if the base had been a real wheel. A thick pintle or axle dropped down into a hole that went through the bed and into the base, so that the bed could revolve and the mortar be aimed.

The mortar was almost obscene, Paolo thought, like a fat and short pig that could only grunt. It was a stubby cast-iron pot with short, solid trunnions sticking out sideways at the bottom which acted as the axle when the gun was elevated. The trunnions were held down by metal clamps (called "cap squares", although they were semi-circular) which stopped the mortar running wild when it fired,.

The piece of timber which could slide back and forth in the slot under the mortar, and which had a saucer-like depression where the underside of the mortar barrel rested, was called the bed bolster. You levered up the muzzle with handspikes until it was at the right elevation, then you pulled on the two ropes and slid the bed bolster underneath until the barrel was supported. After that he was not sure what happened, so he had borrowed the gunner's notebook, although the handwriting was very difficult to read. He sat down on the mortar bed and concentrated.

He had not been reading for more than ten minutes when Thomas Jackson came along and inspected the gun.

"Looks as though it'd go right through the deck the first time you fired it," the American commented. "Still, there are three hundred shells for this one, and three hundred for the other -" he gestured aft to the other mortar. "The French presumably had faith in it."

Paolo looked at the sandy-haired, thin-faced American, and his jaw dropped with dismay. "Do you mean you wouldn't want to fire this if the captain gave you permission?"

"I'd sooner he gave me a direct order, sir," Jackson grinned, teasing the boy. "I've never had anything to do with these things. Always fired guns that shot horizontally. This is more like tossing a grenade over a wall and hoping to hit something you can't see."

"Exactly!" Paolo exclaimed. "You can't do that with an ordinary gun. If your enemy is behind the thick walls of a castle, or on the other side of the hill, you can't attack him with a cannon because it fires straight - more or less straight, anyway. With the mortar you can hurl shells down on him. Explosive shells."

"Yes," Jackson agreed as Stafford and Rossi walked up to listen to the conversation, "but the fuse that makes the shell explode inside the enemy's walls might also make it burst inside the mortar before you can fire it."

Paolo shrugged his shoulders with magnificent indifference. "You might slip and fall from a topsail yard, you might get a hernia, a roundshot might knock your head off the next time we go into action ..."

"Agreed, sir," Jackson said amiably, "but that's not to say I'm going to jump off a topsail yard deliberately, get a hernia, or stand and invite the enemy to knock my head off with a roundshot. When you play around with these mortars, though, you light the fuse in the shell, and if someone's made a mistake in the length or anything, it makes a big bang you never hear!"

"How heavy the shell?" Rossi inquired.

Paolo ran his finger down the page of the notebook, turned over the page and then said: "The gunner says this is about the same as the British 10-inch. And . . ." The tip of his tongue was protruding with the concentration. ". . . Ah, yes. 'Weight of shell when fired' - Mama Mia! It is ninety-three pounds - nearly a hundredweight! That's the hollow cast-iron ball and the powder inside."

"How much powder in it?"

"Only seven pounds."

"Seven?" exclaimed Rossi. "Why, that is nothing!"

Jackson said: "It doesn't need much to blast the shell casing into thousands of pieces. It's these splinters that do the damage."

" 'ow far will it toss a shell, then?" Stafford asked, peering down the bore like a farmer inspecting a horse's teeth.

"Wait," Paolo said, consulting the notebook. "It depends on the amount of powder in the charge. That's obvious, but as far as I can see, it's easier to use more or less powder than to change the elevation of the gun."

Stafford slapped the side of the mortar. "I should fink so; must weigh a ton!"

"One and a half," Paolo said, having just found some details in a neatly-written table. "Ah, here we are. First you must understand about the shell. It is round as you know, but it is cast so that it has the two carrying handles and the filling and fuse hole at the top." He read on a moment and said: "You might well ask why the shell falls the right way up - with the fuse at the top, because it might fall upside down and break off the fuse."

"We might well ask, sir," Rossi agreed politely. "Why does it fall with the fuse upside down?"

"No, no," Paolo said patiently. "Why it falls with the fuse uppermost."

"Yes," Rossi said, having lost track of the conversation, "that is most interesting, sir. But how lights the fuse, then?"

Paolo looked up in surprise and lost his place in the notebook as Stafford and Jackson started laughing. "Why the laughing?"

"We were waiting to hear why the shell falls the right way up after it's been fired, sir," Jackson said.

"Ah, yes. Well, although the shell casing looks like a circular ball from the outside, in fact the bottom is much thicker, and therefore heavier, so it drops first."

"Ah," Rossi said. "I was going to ask you about that, signor. But supposing you fire the shell and bang, it falls in the enemy fort with the fuse at the top and burning; what stops the enemy throwing a bucket of water at it and putting out the fuse?"

"Wait," Paolo said, "let me read more. There must be a reason why that will not work."

"I can fink o' one good reason," Stafford said emphatically. " 'oo'd be daft enough to walk up to a smoking shell with a bucket o' water? Not me! I'd duck down art of the way."

There were two or three minutes' silence while Paolo read through the pages, occasionally grunting to indicate an interesting point, but saying nothing, obviously absorbed by the mental picture of a shell lying in the castle courtyard with smoking fuse.

"Here we are," he exclaimed triumphantly. "The fuse burns at the rate of an inch in four seconds and forty-eight parts."

"Forty-eight parts of what?" Stafford asked.

Paolo looked appealingly at Jackson, who shrugged his shoulders. "Of a second, sir? Most likely a second is divided into a hundred parts. It's the sort of thing they do," he added darkly, knowing the unreliability of the Board of Ordnance.

"Well, it's not very long, is it... about half a second. Anyway, you know how long the shell takes to land, so you cut the fuse to the ..."

"How do you know how long it takes?" Rossi asked.

"Accidente! You have it here in the tables!" Paolo said crossly. "Now just listen. Just suppose your target is 680 yards away. You elevate the mortar to forty-five degrees. Then you put in a charge of one pound of powder; then you cut the fuse to burst ten seconds after you fire the mortar."

"Why ten seconds?" Rossi persisted.

"Mama mia, Rossi! Because it takes ten seconds for the shell to fly through the air and land on a target 680 yards away. That means it's no good having a bucket of water."

"Who cuts the fuse?" Jackson asked.

Paolo had just reached the page giving details of the fuse. "The fuse," he said, like a priest reading a liturgy, "is a conical tube made of beech, willow or some other dry wood. It is open at the top and at the pointed end. So it is filled with a mixture of sulphur, saltpetre and mealed powder - yes," he said quickly, anticipating Rossi's question, "obviously you keep a finger over the hole in the pointed end while you're doing it. Then each end - each hole, in other words - is covered with a composition of tallow and beeswax or pitch, to keep out the damp. When the fuse is put into the shell, the little end is cut off or opened, but the big end is left closed until just before firing.

"So, starting at the beginning, the shell itself is loaded with powder through the fuse hole in the casing. Then the fuse is inserted so that an inch and a half comes out beyond the fuse hole. Protrudes, it means," he explained, proud of his English. "You must make sure there is nothing to prevent the fire from the fuse exploding the powder in the shell - make sure the little end is clear, in other words.

"So there you are," he said proudly, closing the notebook.

"Is all right if the enemy is 680 yards away," Rossi grumbled. "But suppose he is più distante?And the mortar, she is not even loaded yet."

"Ah, yes," Paolo said cheerfully, turning back to the middle pages of the notebook. "Now, we know about the shell and the fuse. Now we have to hurl it at the enemy so that it bursts at his feet." He waved a hand dramatically and slapped the wooden bed.

"Their feet," Jackson said.

"Yes, their feet. First we put in the charge. Now," he said hurriedly, to forestall Rossi, "we will work on an elevation of forty-five degrees. Note that, forty-five degrees. Then we vary the charge to suit the range. The amount of powder can be critical - for example, one pound four ounces of powder gives us 892 yards and yet only another eight ounces gives us an extra 300 yards. I'll choose a straightforward one," he said with a sharp look at Rossi. "Here we are: three pounds of powder gives us a range of 1,945 yards and the time of flight - the time it takes the shell to land after it's been fired, Rossi - is twenty-one seconds and ten parts."

"The fuse in the shell," Rossi said casually, hoping he had now caught out the young midshipman, for a Genovese should always be able to get the better of a Tuscan. "How long should that be so we burst at the enemy's feet?"

Paolo ran his finger across the table. "Four inches and seventy parts."

^Parts of what?"

'Seventy parts of a hundred parts of an inch," Paolo said triumphantly.

"What is the maximum range?" Jackson asked.

"Well, the maximum given in another table for a 10-inch mortar with a different elevation is 3,821 yards, using a twelve-pound charge. The shell takes exactly half a minute to land . . ."

"I wonder if this bed -" Jackson pointed to the one on which the mortar was mounted "would take the recoil from a twelve-pound charge?"

"We do not have to worry about that," Paolo said firmly. "We are learning about mortars in general. So we have the shell filled and the fuse filled. Now we must load the mortar. First we put in the powder charge after carefully measuring it, and then a wad. We beat that down hard with the rammer - that is most important: it is underlined here. Then we put in the shell, holding it with the two handles at the top - which of course means the fuse is uppermost.

"Now we are ready to fire. An officer points the mortar or gives the inclination. That means it is first trained and then elevated, using handspikes to lift it. The bed bolster is then slid in to keep the barrel at the correct angle. The top of the fuse is cut open - you remember it has a cover of beeswax and tallow - and the mortar is primed with the finest powder.

"Two seamen each take a slow match - these have been burning while hanging over water in the match tub, of course - and wind it round a linstock and stand ready. At the order, one seaman lights the fuse in the shell, and quickly gets clear while the other fires the mortar."

"And away she goes," Stafford commented. "Our shell goes up high in the hair like a lark or a smokin' cabbage with the fuse fizzing away, and then it lands wiv a thump at the enemy's feet. A thump which puts out the fuse, sir!" he added as an afterthought.

"Oh no it doesn't," Paolo said sternly. "There's a note here about that. The fuse burns in air, water or in the earth. No thump is going to put it out."

"Supposing you don't want to fire an explosive shell?" Jackson said. "Supposing you were on land and being attacked by a great mass of men? I've heard something about using shot."

Paolo read through three more pages and then said triumphantly: "Here it is, pound shot. Each shot weighs - well, of course, a pound. You use a two and a half pound charge of powder, and on top of that you put a wooden base. Then you put in one hundred of the pound shot. They're in a bag, I suppose - it doesn't say. Nor does it give maximum ranges. But just think, if the range was 2,000 yards. Imagine being hit with a shot weighing one pound which has just spent the last twenty seconds being hurled through the air. And for the last half," he added with an authoritative note in his voice, "with the force of gravity added . . ."

"Yes, there wouldn't be much velocity left from the charge," Jackson said. "In fact I should think it would be like being hit with a one-pound shot dropped on your head from a cliff a thousand yards high. Less, because you have to allow for the curve."

"The parabola," Paolo said. " 'Amplitude of the parabola' - that's what they call the range in these notes."

"They would," said Stafford sourly. "Makes gunners sound more important and a mortar sound more dangerous to the enemy. But it still sounds to me like trying to kill your neighbour by 'eaving bricks over 'is wall - an' you don't even know if 'e's at 'ome."

Rossi suddenly pointed up at the Calypso's masts. "They're hoisting a signal."