Ramage And The Drum Beat (6 page)

The American pictured the scene below deck round the magazine: screens would have been unrolled, hanging down like thick blankets, and soaked with water to prevent the flash from an accidental explosion from getting into the magazine itself, where the small cylindrical bags of gunpowder for the carronades were stacked. Outside the screens all the young powder boys would be waiting. They’d be chattering with excitement and waiting to be handed the cartridges, which they would put into their wooden cartridge boxes, slide the lids down the rope handles, and scurry up on deck to their respective guns, dreaming of glory, fearing death, but more scared of a gun captain’s bellow should they delay reloading for a second.

A rumbling noise made Jackson think of Mr Ramage, who could not stand the scraping of metal on stone. The men had the grindstone turning and he saw Mr Southwick, a great curved sword in his hand, gesticulating to a man to pour more water on the spinning wheel and then begin to hone the blade with the skill of a butcher, pausing every few seconds to sight the edge against the sun and finger it gently.

Catching sight of Ramage looking up at him, Jackson hurriedly raised the telescope to look at the frigate.

‘Jackson! If you’re so interested in what’s going on down here you’d better leave the telescope with the lookout and reload my pistols.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’ Thankfully the American started down the ratlines.

Southwick cursed as the reflection showed he’d honed a slight flat into one side of the curved blade, but that bit of carelessness would have to be removed later because the men with the cutlasses were impatient to get at the stone. Southwick loved his sword and as he slid it into the rawhide scabbard, which was itself stiff enough to break a man’s arm with a single blow, he reflected that it was a real fighting sword, heavy yet balanced, and the rasping of the shagreen covering on the handle against the palm of his hand reminded him he personally caught the shark, cured the skin and fitted it on himself. No, his sword wasn’t one of those strips of tin decked out in pinchbeck wire that was only fit to wear on ceremonial occasions; it was a man’s sword.

Unaware of the effect his own enthusiasm had had on his captain’s thoughts and decisions during the past fifteen minutes, Southwick would have given anything to know what was in Ramage’s mind; what his plan was to capture the frigate. To the Master the whole thing looked impossible, and he’d been in half a mind to tell Mr Ramage so but couldn’t think of a tactful way of saying it. Anyway, the captain had looked confident enough from the time the hulk first hove up over the horizon, and had guessed she was a Don long before she’d shown her colours. So obviously he had a plan, though Southwick admitted that if it’d been up to him he’d have squared away for Gibraltar by now, merely noting in the log the time the Spaniard’s colours had been hoisted, and her position.

Standing to weather of the men at the tiller, Ramage appeared confident enough in his faded blue uniform and a battered hat, whose silk cockade was so frayed that it looked like a black dahlia. He sensed from the way the men bustled about that they thought these were the first moves in some brilliantly simple scheme to capture the frigate. But his mind had never been so barren of ideas, and the Kathleen was closing rapidly with the hulk – hell, how the scraping of that grindstone grated on his nerves.

He needed a red herring to draw across the Spaniards’ bows to occupy their attention while he conjured up some plan to force them to surrender – but it’d need to be an explosive red herring to do any good, he thought gloomily. An explosive red herring! ‘Gunner’s mate!’ he bellowed. ‘Mr Southwick, pass the word for the gunner’s mate!’

George Edwards, the gunner’s mate of the Kathleen, had issued the gun locks, spare flints, trigger lines and other equipment for the carronades from his store, and then gone to the tiny lead-lined magazine. After taking off his boots and putting on a pair of felt slippers, he emptied his pockets of metal objects that might make a spark, unlocked the door with a brass key and entered to issue the waiting gun captains with powder horns containing the fine priming powder for the locks.

The fire screens round the magazine had already been unrolled and were hanging down like thick blankets and dripping with water. By the light of the lantern placed outside and illuminating the magazine through a glass window, Edwards inspected the magazine men as they trooped in, stripped to the waist, bare-footed, and with rags tied round their heads to stop perspiration running into their eyes – heaving out the cartridges in the magazine was hot and exhausting work. As Edwards looked slowly round the dimly lit magazine, methodically checking what he saw, the magazine men lined up ready to hand the neatly stacked cartridges from the racks out through the scuttle to the waiting powder boys.

Although he had not been back to his native Kent for more than a few weeks at a time in the last thirty years, Edwards had lost little of the Kentish burr in his voice and none of the slow, thoughtful, almost cautious habits of the fisherman, painfully learned during a boyhood spent in his father’s fishing boat working among the treacherous shoals of the Goodwin Sands from Deal beach.

In build he was like one of the guns to which his life was devoted: slightly round-shouldered, barrel-chested with narrow thighs and long legs. From his shoulders to his feet his body had the same taper as a gun, his head forming the knob-shaped cascable at the end of the breech, his body the barrel.

For once Edwards was satisfied with what he saw in the magazine: thanks to the captain he’d been able to exercise the men so they could be trusted to pass the cartridges to the boys with the minimum of fuss and movement; in fact they could do it blindfolded – that was how they’d been exercising for the past week.

For all that, Edwards was puzzled when he heard the word being passed that the captain wanted to see him at once, and the sudden bright sunshine made him blink as he emerged on deck to find Mr Ramage and the Master waiting.

Ramage said abruptly to him and the Master: ‘We have to make the Dons think we can destroy their ship.’

Southwick said ‘Aye aye, sir,’ in a matter-of-fact voice, but Edwards thought of the row of gun ports along the frigate’s side.

‘How do you propose we should do it, Mr Southwick?’

Both Master and gunner’s mate knew by now this was the captain’s way of testing them, and while Edwards pondered carefully Southwick admitted frankly and characteristically: ‘Haven’t thought about it, sir. Must be some way, though…’

‘Listen then, particularly you Edwards. I want you to be able to blow the stern off that ship.’

Ramage, nettled by Southwick’s easy-going attitude and disappointed that neither looked surprised at what he’d just said, mistook their confidence in him for indifference and snapped at Edwards: ‘Any ideas?’

The gunner’s mate shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir, it’s a bit – well, sudden, as you might say.’

Ramage nodded, realizing that resentment from either man at the present moment would mean he’d lose their co-operation.

‘Well,’ he said, noticing both Gianna and Antonio edging closer to hear, ‘if the Dons can get a broadside into us, we’ll soon be down there,’ he pointed towards the seabed, ‘where the chart says “No bottom at ninety fathoms”. So we’ve got to tackle her from ahead or astern, risking only her bow or stern-chasers.’

Ramage saw both men nod warily, obviously expecting another question to be shot at them.

‘Now then, you can see she’s lying with the wind fine on her starboard quarter, which means, Mr Southwick?’

‘That we can run across her stern, rake her with one broadside and luff round and rake her again with the other without getting into the arc of fire of her broadside guns!’ the Master answered promptly.

‘We could. Now supposing she was one of our own ships – on fire, perhaps, and we wanted to get the men off?’

Southwick thought for a moment, ruffling his hand through his hair. ‘We could heave-to the Kathleen to windward and drift a boat down on a grass warp, sir.’

‘And how does all that help us with our present problem of capturing an enemy ship?’

‘Fill the boat with boarders?’ Southwick asked hopefully. ‘And have them picked off one by one by musket fire?’

Edwards’ eyes narrowed. If it’d been a question of seamanship alone, Mr Ramage would have sent for the Master’s mate and the bosun’s mate as well as the Master, but certainly not the gunner’s mate. Since he had been sent for, it must be something to do with guns – or powder. Well, there was no harm in guessing.

‘Powder, sir? A few barrels in the boat and a long fuse?’

He was a man who spoke slowly and deliberately, as if every word was a shot to be aimed without haste and, when fired, to have the maximum effect on the target.

Ramage nodded and unexpectedly felt relieved. Perhaps his idea wasn’t so wild after all if Edwards could guess it. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, spread it on top of the binnacle and sketched with a pencil as he spoke. ‘Precisely. An explosion boat. I want a big enough explosion to damage her stern and spring the butts of the planks – just a couple on the waterline would be enough; the pumps couldn’t keep up with that. And she may be leaking already. So how much powder do we need in the boat?’

‘No idea, sir,’ Edwards admitted frankly, making no attempt to avoid Ramage’s eyes, which seemed to bore right through him. ‘Never heard of a thing like that before. No experience of powder exploding in an unconfined space. Lose p’raps two-thirds of the effect.’

‘If you loaded up a boat and saw it explode, do you reckon you could then judge how much more or less powder you’d need in another one to damage the frigate?’

Edwards paused, his eyes almost closing with concentration. Then with complete confidence he nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ He remembered how the captain hated anyone adding ‘I think so’ to a statement.

‘Very well, you’ll have the chance of seeing one. I want to force the Dons to surrender and take a tow. I don’t want to sink ’em unless we have to.’

‘Indeed we don’t,’ Southwick exclaimed, ‘think of all that prize money going to the bottom!’

‘So,’ continued Ramage, ‘first of all I want to explode a boat about fifty yards away. The Spaniards will have been wondering why the devil a boat with a canvas cover over it was being drifted down towards them. When it suddenly blows up they’ll get the shock of their lives. So I want a big bang and lots of smoke. Then, while they’re still feeling shaky, I shall send a boat over with a flag of truce, warn ’em the next explosion boat will remove their stern, and suggest they surrender.’

‘And if they don’t, sir?’

‘We blow their stern off,’ Ramage said grimly, rubbing the scar on his forehead.

Neither man said anything and Ramage, knowing speed was now essential, snapped, ‘Now look at this sketch. Here is the Spaniard. We approach like this and lower the boat here, and tow it on a long warp – a grass warp because it must float. Then we carry on towards the Spaniard, making sure we keep out of the arcs of her broadside guns, and begin to turn here, and then we heave-to to windward. The boat should drift round like a tail, and I want it to explode about fifty yards from the Spaniards.

‘Your fuse, Edwards, will be lit when we get to there and must fire the powder when we are there. We’re making about five knots. I want at least a mile to get the boat into the right position. Say fifteen minutes from the moment you light the fuse.’

‘Right, Mr Southwick, prepare the boat and a long grass warp. Use the jolly boat and we’ll have to lower it loaded. Edwards, decide how much powder you want, how you’ll fire it, and get it all loaded into the boat. Any questions?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Edwards. ‘The fuse. Fifteen minutes is a long time.’

‘Yes, but I daren’t risk less. Hadn’t you better use a portfire?’

‘I was just thinking that, sir. Safer than fuses. I’ll use two, in case there’s a dollop of spray or one goes out. They burn for fifteen minutes anyway so I don’t have to cut ’em.’

‘Don’t forget we’ll be towing the boat at five knots: there’ll be more than a dollop of spray flying over it.’

‘Aye aye, sir. How much time have I got to prepare?’

Ramage looked at the frigate. ‘A quarter of an hour. And Mr Southwick, make sure the deck is thoroughly wetted round the jolly boat. A few loose grains of powder…’

Edwards went down to the darkness of a magazine. He could think better there. It had the same peace as the fish cuddy in his father’s boat when the wind howled on deck, because the lead lining of the magazine with the dampened fire-screen hanging down deadened the noise. He sat down on a stack of cartridges, feeling the flannel of the bags coarse against his hand, and went through every point.

First the powder. Should he use it in its special barrels or in cartridge bags? It’d have to be cartridge bags because barrels would need separate fuses and they probably wouldn’t explode simultaneously.

How much powder? Well, to breach a wall you generally reckoned on fifty to a hundred pounds, depending on its thickness, and that had to be tamped down with a covering of ten times its own weight of earth. Each flannel cartridge weighed just half a pound, and he finally decided on a hundred. It was only a guess, but anyway he daren’t use more for the first boat because if he had to increase the quantity for the second one he’d be left very short of cartridges for the guns, since the rest of the powder was still in the copper-hooped barrels.

Edwards stood up and told the magazine men to pass a hundred cartridges out through the scuttle, calling to the powder boys to carry them up on deck and stack them near the jolly boat in the stern davits. After sending a man to warn the Master that the powder was on its way up, he sat down again. How was he going to fix the portfires? There was no question of just making a hole in the flannel bag of a cartridge and jamming one in – that would be a quick way of blowing up the Kathleen! No, he’d have to use a barrel, jamming the long cylindrical tube of the portfire into the bung-hole, then wedging each barrel among the bags of powder.