The Ramage Touch (28 page)

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 jib boom 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. ’Tain’t 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…’