Ramage's Diamond (31 page)

“Ready!” Lacey called, looking anxiously at Ramage. Stafford leaned over and cocked the lock, and the click, combined with Jackson looking round expectantly at him, suddenly roused Ramage; with a shock he realized that he was not sure whether he should first have taken formal possession of the Diamond Rock. What on earth did one do? When you captured an enemy ship you hoisted your own ensign above his, but what did you do with an island? He remembered vaguely that he had occasionally read of some formal annexation when a new island was discovered. A flag was hoisted and speeches were made. Did the same rules apply when you captured one?

He racked his brain for a precedent, could think of none, and hastily decided that too much formality would be better than too little. It was wiser to say a few pompous words that subsequently proved to be unnecessary than to fail to say them and provoke their Lordships' wrath. Apart from that, young post captains at the bottom of the Navy List rarely capture islands. If Ramage, Nicholas, is setting a precedent, then he will do it in style, he told himself.

He removed his hat and Lacey hurriedly did the same. The men stood rigidly to attention and did it so naturally that he realized they were all expecting some sort of ceremony, though probably for their battery rather than for the whole Rock.

What the deuce should he say? He coughed and tucked his hat under his left arm. He ought to be wearing his sword. Lacey's rapt expression would have been more suitable if he was about to be blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than listen to his Captain make a fool of himself.

“I, Nicholas Ramage, Captain in the Royal Navy and commanding officer of His Majesty's frigate
Juno
…” That was a good start, but what now? He thought for a moment and continued “… do hereby take possession of this island, known as the
Rocher du Diamant,
or the Diamond Rock … for and on behalf of His Majesty King George the Third!”

The men began cheering wildly and an excited Lacey joined in waving his hat in the air. Ramage, who had been expecting the men to start giggling, was so pleased with their reaction to words which had sounded ponderous and absurd to him, that he began to grin broadly. After a moment he managed to arrange his expression into a stern look, more befitting a conqueror, albeit of a barren rock, and, as soon as the cheering stopped he looked around, as though surveying this newest gem in the King's crown, put his hat back on his head and said in a ringing voice: “And I hereby name this battery the Marchesa Battery. May it play its part in defending the Diamond Rock!”

Again the men burst out in a roar of cheering and one of them began singing the first line of “Hearts of Oak” and the rest of them took it up, bellowing lustily.

The moment they finished Ramage gestured to Lacey who took a pace forward and shouted “Marchesa Battery—fire!”

Jackson tugged the trigger line and the gun gave a prodigious roar which echoed back from the rock immediately behind it. Smoke spurted from the muzzle, spreading into an oily yellow cloud. The trucks of the carriage clattered as they ran back over the rocky surface and the rope breeching suddenly tautened and stretched as it absorbed the recoil and then thrust the carriage forward again a few inches. A mile to seaward there was a vertical spurt of water, like a whale spouting.

Ramage walked over to examine each end of the breeching to make sure it had not chafed on the rocks round which it was secured. One round remained, but he decided against using it: the next job was to get more powder and shot over from the
Juno,
but that could wait until tomorrow; then the men would only have to row a few yards. There was no point in leaving the gun manned; the risk of the French making a determined attempt during the night to recapture a barren rock they did not yet know they had lost was, to say the least of it, remote.

He let the men chatter happily for a few minutes, laughing and joking, teasing Jackson that he had missed the invisible ship, and then he said to Lacey: “Secure the gun now, and we'll do those soundings.”

Fifteen minutes later the jolly-boat was being rowed slowly up and down the south side of the Rock, close under the sheer cliff, with a man standing in the bow heaving a lead and reporting the depths he found. Ramage used the boat compass to take rough bearings and Lacey busily wrote down the depths and bearings as they were called out.

They started right close in to the cliffs, so close that the men occasionally had to fend off with the blades of their oars as a swell wave pushed the boat against the rock face. Ramage soon stopped glancing upwards because it made him dizzy: the cliff soared up vertically; from the boat it might have been five thousand feet high, rather than five hundred. Just as it soared up vertically into the sky, so it plunged vertically to the sea bed. The depths right up against the foot of the cliff were staggering, and he was glad he had told Lacey to bring the deep sea lead, as well as the hand lead. They were finding forty fathoms close into the cliff, and fifty fathoms only thirty yards out.

As the boat reached the end of the fifteenth run and turned to begin the next, and the leadsman, with water streaming down him, hurriedly coiling up the line, Ramage leaned across the thwart to look at Lacey's rough chart. The picture of the sea bed slowly taking shape on the paper from the depths and the bearing was far from reassuring. Lacey looked up anxiously, knowing how much depended on the result of the survey, and Ramage commented with as much nonchalance as he could muster: “We won't risk running aground, anyway.”

Bad as it was, it could have been worse. There was a lot of coral down there, staghorn coral as far as could be judged from the pieces that came up with the lead. The trouble was that the scooped-out depression in the bottom of the lead, which was filled with tallow, was only intended to have sand or mud adhere to it; the tiny bits of coral that the lead knocked off as it hit the bottom were hardly enough for a proper identification. Any sort of coral was bad, though: it was jagged and sharp and quickly chafed anchor cables, and the
Juno,
Ramage reflected grimly, would be laying out four anchors … Perhaps only three, if the present calm weather held.

As he watched the birds wheeling round the cliff—he saw a white tropic bird with its long forked tail streaming out like two ribbons—he was thankful that there were no back eddies of wind to drive the
Juno
against the cliff. None, he corrected himself, with the wind in this direction. No back eddies and very little swell. He looked up again at the top of the cliff, which was gaunt, grey and cold even in the sunlight, and so sheer that only a few bushes managed to grow in cracks and crevices, and for the hundredth time he wondered whether he could do it.

T
HE SKY
to the eastward was gradually turning pink beyond the mountains of Martinique early next morning as the
Juno
's capstan slowly revolved with Bevins, the fiddler, standing on top and scratching out a tune to encourage the men straining at the capstan bars.

Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail, affecting a nonchalant stance to disguise the tension gripping him. The
Juno
was about to set out on her shortest voyage, less than half a mile, and he was as nervous as a kitten hearing its first dog bark. The ten-inch cable used to tow the
Surcouf
was now amidships, the first hundred fathoms of it flaked down and ready to run, only this time it would be running upwards.

The launch was towing astern with an anchor slung ready beneath it; another cable was flaked out on the quarterdeck ready to bend on to it. The two cutters were also astern, ready to tow the frigate to its final position, and the topmen were waiting ready for the order to go aloft. The jolly-boat would be at the cove by now, and Aitken and his men should have started their long climb to the top of the Rock. The young Scot had been confident that he had found a route merely by examining the Rock through the telescope. Ramage, although doubtful, had not argued with him and he went off cheerfully before dawn, his men carrying rope ladders, axes, heavy mauls borrowed from the carpenter, sharpened stakes, speaking-trumpet, and several coils of rope.

The
Surcouf
was lying head to wind, all her sails neatly furled on her yards, and only a dozen men on board. The First Lieutenant had worked well into the night to have the ship ready, returning to the
Juno
to report to Ramage at midnight, so exhausted that he was swaying as he spoke. Ramage had sent him off to snatch some sleep, telling him that it would take the
Juno
two or three hours to get into position so that he could sleep on, but Aitken had left orders that he was to be called at dawn.

Wagstaffe had tacked in towards the Rock with the
Créole
and was now stretching north again, and Ramage thought for a moment of
La Mutine.
She should have arrived in Barbados yesterday, and with luck she was now on her way back. By tonight or at the latest tomorrow morning he could expect Admiral Davis to arrive in the
Invincible.
There was barely time to get half the job done.

Slowly the frigate weighed as the sequence of reports and orders passed to and fro between the fo'c's'le and quarterdeck. The yards were already braced sharp up and the jibs were being hoisted but left to flap in the wind.

“Short stay!” came a shout from the fo'c's'le, warning Ramage that the anchor cable was making the same angle as the forestay. He put the speaking-trumpet to his lips.

“Away aloft!”

The topmen swarmed up the rigging and his orders followed in quick succession. While men sheeted home the headsails he shouted aloft to the topmen: “Trice up and lay out!” As soon as the men were out on the yards with the studding-sail booms triced up out of the way he ordered the men on deck: “Man the topsail sheets!” A moment later the topmen were being told to “Let fall!” and as the sails tumbled down he gave a fresh order to the men on deck: “Sheet home!”

By now the anchor was off the bottom and the
Juno
was gathering way. It would be two or three minutes before the anchor broke surface and only a few minutes more before the frigate would be anchoring again. He glanced up at the wind-vane at the maintruck and then to the eastward, where the sun was just lifting over the mountains. So far, so good; at least the French convoy had not chosen this moment to round Pointe des Salines.

Fifteen minutes later the
Juno
had rounded up off the south side of the Rock and dropped anchor again, gathering sternway under a backed foretopsail, so that the cable thundered out through the starboard hawse, smoking with the friction.

As soon as Southwick signalled from the fo'c's'le how much cable had been veered, Ramage gave another series of orders which braced round the yards so that the
Juno
gathered way again and sailed a short distance before the fore-topsail was backed once more and the larboard anchor let go as the
Juno
went astern in yet another sternboard. Within minutes the topmen were furling all the sails and the frigate was riding to her two anchors, the cables making an angle of 45 degrees.

The
Juno
was now lying not quite parallel with the face of the cliff fifty yards away. The two cutters were going to have to pull her stern round towards the cliff while the launch was rowed astern to lay out the spare anchor that would hold her there in position. It was the lightest anchor in the ship and one which, in an emergency, could be slipped and left behind.

Southwick came striding aft to join Ramage on the quarter-deck, and he wore the contented grin that Ramage knew from long experience meant that he approved of the way his Captain had handled the ship. “Now to get those cutters towing,” he said gleefully, rubbing his hands. He looked up and commented: “Y'know, sir, that's a damned tall cliff!”

“I wish you'd mentioned that before,” Ramage said sarcastically. “It had almost escaped my attention.”

“Can't see Aitken up there yet.”

“Remember Pythagoras,” Ramage said. “You're looking up the perpendicular side of what that poor beggar is scrambling up the hypotenuse!”

“They're used to it, these Scotsmen,” Southwick said, blithely ignoring Ramage's bad temper. “All mountains in Scotland—goats and sheep and haggises, climbing all the time, they are. Especially the haggises,” he added before Ramage could correct him, “very nimble they are, Aitken tells me.”

Ramage shook his head despairingly. “Neither the Good Lord nor the First Lord has seen fit to spare me from a Master who is so damnably cheerful first thing in the morning. However, Mr Southwick, oblige me by putting those cutters to work: I have to lay
this
ship alongside
that
cliff before I can settle down to a leisurely breakfast.”

As soon as the men in the two cutters began rowing with the oars double-banked, Ramage ordered the quartermaster to put the wheel over; there might be enough current to give the ship a sheer larboard, which would help the oarsmen. Sure enough the frigate slowly swung in towards the cliff face, and the coxswains of both boats hurried their men to take up the slack.

Now it was the turn of the men in the waiting launch. The anchor was slung beneath the boat and the cable on the quarterdeck led down to it through the stern-chase port. The oars were double-banked and the coxswain waited ready. Ramage gave the signal and the launch began to move away, heading almost directly astern of the
Juno.
Men on the quarterdeck slowly fed the cable through the port, careful to let out enough to help the launch, but not so much that the heavy rope hung down in too large a curve.

Southwick now had men bracing the yards round so they were as nearly fore and aft as possible. The
Juno
was going to end up so close to the cliff that the larboard ends of the yards—the main-yard overhung the ship's side by twenty-three feet —might otherwise foul the Rock.