Ramage's Signal (6 page)

I
T WANTED a few minutes to midnight with a clear sky when the
Calypso
glided under fore and maintopsails into the bay formed by the headlands of Foix and Aspet. Every minute or so another seaman hurried back from the leadsman at the main chains and gave Ramage the depth of water: it was shoaling very gradually and unless they were unlucky enough to find and hit a high submerged rock they would very soon be anchoring in four fathoms close to the beach.

Aloft, out along the topsail yards, seamen were waiting to furl the sails, but instead of acting at Aitken's bellow through the speaking-trumpet, ship's boys would scamper up the rigging and pass the word, although the topmen would get a preliminary warning as the
Calypso
luffed and came head to wind, backing the topsails so that she would stop and then, gathering sternway, set her anchor.

The splash of the anchor hitting the water should be the only noise that might travel as far as the semaphore station, which was now about a mile away on the
Calypso
's starboard beam.

The stars seemed everywhere, even reflecting in the water now and again as the frigate passed through what Southwick, who was waiting on the fo'c's'le for the word to anchor, would call “a flat spot”; sufficient stars, Ramage noted, to give enough light to distinguish the shape of the land at a mile and recognize a man's face at four feet.

Inspecting the semaphore station yet again with the night-glass, and allowing for the upside-down image, Ramage was surprised to see that the semaphore tower, or screen, or whatever it was called, was in fact built on a small hill, thus raising it another thirty feet or more, although the rest of the headland was flat, reminding him of a miniature Dungeness and making the ends of the barrack buildings stand out like shadowy gravestones.

Even more surprising, neither Southwick nor Aitken had noticed during their close inspection from seaward earlier in the day that there was a low but wide hill two-thirds of the way round the bay, nearer Foix than Aspet, and as far as he could see the hill ran down to the beach and there was no sign of a road. Which meant that any road or lane from the semaphore station to the village of Foix, or joining the two headlands, would have made a long detour inland. So the sentry was likely to be on the north side of the camp, where the lane came in. Yes, a tiny building they had not seen before—was that the guardhouse?

He could hear the chatter of the bow wave round the
Calypso
's cutwater, and the frigate's decks looked strangely bare: the red and green cutters and the gig, normally stowed amidships, had been hoisted out and were now towing astern, full of Marines and seamen. Martin and Kenton would be quite happy with the cutters, but Paolo would be excited at the idea of being in command of the gig, at least until Ramage climbed down the rope ladder hanging from the taffrail.

He listened to the last sounding reported by a breathless seaman, looked again at the hill which was now just on the larboard bow, and then at the semaphore tower, now drawing round to the starboard quarter. “My compliments to Mr Southwick,” he told the seaman, “and tell him to stand by to anchor as convenient.”

Which was a simple way of saying let go the anchor as soon as the way is off the ship.

“Rowlands?”

Rowlands was a sulky but ambitious Welsh boy with no brains who enjoyed nothing more than being allowed to climb aloft, and Ramage had kept him standing by to carry the message to the maintopmen to furl. The moment the foretopmen saw the other sail being furled they would follow suit.

“Here, sir.”

“Right, up to the maintop with your message!”

As the boy ran for the ratlines Ramage told the quartermaster to bring the
Calypso
head to wind, and the order was immediately passed to the two men at the wheel while Aitken gave instructions to men standing by at braces, sheets and hal-yards. All blocks had been greased again during the day—much to the annoyance of the cook, who had to provide the grease, or slush, which floated to the top of the boiler when salt pork or salt beef was cooked. Although it was against regulations, the cook and his mate usually sold the slush to the men, who liked to smear it on their bread—the official name for the biscuits with which they were issued, hard as board when fresh and crumbling when attacked by age or weevils.

The
Calypso
turned to starboard, but so smooth was the water and still the night, that Ramage had the sensation that the ship was stationary and the half-moon of the bay was sliding from right to left, like the swing of a scythe across stalks of wheat.

The chattering of the bow wave quietened to a mutter and then went silent. The coxswain said quietly: “No weight on the rudder, sir; we'll have sternway in a few moments.”

The forward movement of the ship, with water flowing past the rudder, meant that the men at the wheel had to use strength to turn the wheel and in turn the rudder, the amount of effort required being proportional to the speed. Once the ship stopped and then began to move astern, the action of the rudder was reversed.

A heavy splash forward, the drumming of heavy rope paying out rapidly and a strong smell of scorching as the friction burned both hemp and wood, showed that Southwick had let go the anchor. The backed topsails gave the
Calypso
enough sternway to make sure the anchor dug well in. The men aloft could see no more cable was being paid out, and a hissing and rustling told Ramage that two big topsails were being clewed up and then furled.

Everything seems to be a compromise, he thought crossly. He had given a lot of thought to the
Calypso
's arrival in the Baie de Foix. It was essential that the French at Foix—at the semaphore station, anyway—thought she was a French frigate coming in to anchor for her own reasons. They had seen a French frigate pass westward at noon and bear away towards Minorca; now she had come back.

At what point, Ramage tried to decide, did it become a matter of interest to the garrison at Foix? If she came in and anchored in broad daylight the commanding officer of the garrison would expect to be called on board or, more likely, have himself rowed out, in the hope of an invitation to dinner. An evening arrival meant the same thing, with the hope of a half bottle of brandy. But an arrival late at night—not surreptitiously, to raise suspicion, but without a lot of noise to rouse the sleeping garrison commander—might leave the decision to the sentry. If he happened to notice a ship anchoring in the bay he would probably not bother (or dare) rouse the commanding officer, who would curse him for raising the alarm at the arrival of what he knew to be a French ship. And obviously she was French: they had seen her pass flying a French flag, and when had any of them seen, or even heard of, a British ship? Everyone knew the
rosbifs
had been driven out of the Mediterranean …

Would that be what was happening over at the semaphore station? He shrugged his shoulders. It seemed likely. Coming in quietly like this would seem natural enough—if the commanding officer of the garrison was by chance awake, he would assume he could hear so little because of the distance. If he was asleep hellip; well, he should sleep on.

A seaman appeared out of the darkness to report how much cable Southwick had veered, and pass on the Master's opinion that the anchor was holding well in what the leadsman—who had “armed” the lead, filling the cavity in the bottom with tallow so that a specimen of the sea bottom would stick to it—reported was hard sand and some small shell.

Aitken appeared beside him as the
Calypso
finally swung head to wind, the hill showing clearly as a black lump on the larboard bow and the semaphore tower as a square top to a small anthill on the starboard quarter.

Ramage pulled his sword round, pushed down on the pistols in his belt to make sure the clips were secure, and jammed his hat down hard on his head.

“Well, Mr Aitken, I hand over the ship to you. We should be back within an hour with the prisoners.”

Aitken saluted, “Aye aye, sir. I'll have her careened and painted by then!”

Ramage laughed: the young Scot rarely joked, and that he should do so at this moment was an indication that he regarded the operation as about as important as sending a boat away with casks and axes on a wooding and watering expedition.

The cutters had a few yards farther to row than the gig, so he called down for them to be on their way as soon as they were cast off. Seamen at the
Calypso
's taffrail took the painters from the kevels and dropped them down to the two boats, and Ramage heard both Martin and Kenton give the first of the sequence of orders that would have the oars in the water and rowing briskly, cloth bound round them to deaden the noise where they worked between the thole pins.

Ramage climbed down the rope ladder into the gig and as he sat down in the sternsheets, moving his two pistols slightly so the butts did not dig into his lower ribs, he said to Jackson: “Let's get under way.”

As soon as the American had called up to the
Calypso
's taffrail and Ramage had heard the painter landing in the bow of the gig, where the bowman quickly coiled it, he said to both Jackson and Orsini: “We'll be landing more to the north. Farther inshore.”

Martin had been instructed to take the red cutter in a wide sweep round the end of the sand spit to the far side, to land his party of Marines—who were under the command of the sergeant—as close to the second barrack hut from seaward as possible, while Kenton was to land on the bay side by the second barrack hut on that side.

Under the plan, a corporal would attack the seaward hut with a section of Marines while the sergeant attacked the second hut on the far side and the other corporal would attack the third hut, next to it, but farther inland.

Rennick, in Kenton's cutter, would take the nearest hut, the second on the bay side, while a section of men would run to help the corporal attacking the seaward hut (and also cutting off any Frenchmen trying to bolt) and another group of Marines would run inland to secure the fifth hut, the nearest to the semaphore tower.

Ramage's last-minute change was that the seamen in his gig would land well to the north of the semaphore tower, skirt the hill on which it stood and, as soon as they met the track or lane leading to the village, find where the guardhouse was and seize the sentry or the whole guard, if that was how the French had arranged it.

Ramage and his seamen would be the first to catch the rabbits if the Marine ferrets bolted them. But, he hoped, guile would work better than a ferret.

As the men bent to the oars and the gig spurted forward, Ramage could just make out the two cutters to starboard, each diverging slightly, and ahead was the small hill with the strange wooden wall on top of it, high enough to blot out some low stars, as though it was a square sail. It was high; now he could see that the men on Aspet, with a decent spyglass, could read the signals, however they were made. Still, it must be strongly built not to have been blown down by a
mistral
from the northwest, the most frequent strong wind along this coast, or the
labé
from the south-west. Or, for that matter, the
levant
from the east or the
céruse
from the south-east, all of which would hit the tower, or wall rather, more or less at right angles. The
ponant
from the south and
tramontane
from the north should hit it end-on.

In spite of the cloth wrapped round the oars, the thole pins themselves, not a tight fit, still groaned as if protesting. However, thole pins were better than rowlocks for silent work, and he was thankful they were fitted to the cutters. Creak, splash, creak… The men were rowing as silently as possible, and as the gig approached the beach Ramage could hear the slap, suck and gurgle of wavelets as they curled over to break on the sand, and a few small wading birds wakened, calling to each other, passing urgent warnings. And now the smell of the maquis: a mixture of pine, dried grass, herbs and, Ramage thought, nostalgia, too, as well as a whiff of soot from the shielded lantern.

He realized the absurdity of wearing a hat and took it off and tucked it under the thwart. The semaphore tower began to look like a poacher's view of the end of a barn. And there was the platform on top described by Aitken. Could he distinguish a system of battens—probably forming slides between which the shutters went up and down to make the signals? They certainly slid up and down: that much was clear when the
Calypso
passed, though he considered hinges on one side, and opening and closing like windows, would have been easier. The shutters must, he thought cynically, go up and down like guillotine blades … But how did they form the signals? Did the shapes represent individual letters of the alphabet, words or whole phrases?

About thirty yards to go and he heard Jackson, at the tiller and standing in his little compartment that was cut off from the rest of the boat by the sternsheets, mutter something to Paolo, who stood up, holding the grapnel and lowering it over the stern.

Although Ramage could feel the tension and excitement spreading through the landing party, the men at the oars continued the same steady stroke and he felt detached rather than excited.

“Orsini,” he said quietly, “you and I will land first and go round the edge of that hill, looking for the track leading out of the camp. There's bound to be a guardhouse. If there's a sentry, leave him to me; if there's a whole guard we'll have to see.” He turned forward and said: “You in the landing party—you will follow Jackson, who'll be fifteen yards astern of Mr Orsini. Any man who makes a noise will have to account to me—after Jackson's finished with him.” The men chuckled.

Ramage caught sight of Kenton's cutter two or three hundred yards farther down the coast. It was now near the beach—that was why Ramage had decided to use the gig, which was narrower, shallower and faster than the cutter, and because he would be leaving the
Calypso
after the others he wanted to be first at the beach, knowing at the same time that Rennick would be urging Kenton to make a race of it.