Ramage's Challenge (33 page)

“Mr Southwick—foredeck there!
Let go!
”

Almost simultaneously he felt, rather than heard, a series of thuds—the axes cutting the anchor adrift at the cathead. Then, a few moments later, he smelled burning. The anchor cable was now racing through the hawse and round the bitts, the hemp scorching with the friction against the wood.

“Larboard!” he yelled at Jackson, and while the helmsmen spun the wheel with desperate urgency, Aitken snatched the proffered speaking-trumpet and gave a stream of sail orders and then waited. Ramage could only imagine the anchor cable running out. Come on! he implored Southwick under his breath. Snub the bloody cable and get that anchor biting home before we hit the rock! No, he decided, there is not room for the
Calypso
to swing round, like a running dog suddenly brought up all standing by its leash.

He pictured the men at the bitts struggling to loop over bights of heavy, stiff cable to slow it up and finally stop it running out. No, it was hopeless. The
Calypso
was sailing too fast. Trying to stop six hundred tons of frigate like that—either the cable would break under the strain or the men would never hold it on the bitts.

But—yes! Yes, the rock was sliding to starboard—an illusion caused by the
Calypso
beginning to turn to larboard. And the blasted French frigate? There she was, topsails and courses in straining curves, and now on the
Calypso
's starboard quarter. And not changing course.

Aitken was shouting, sails slatting, the yards being braced round. Then, suddenly, the
Calypso
's stern seemed to slew to larboard, as though skidding on ice.

“The cable held, sir!” Aitken shouted jubilantly. He pointed down on the main-deck. “Sent the men at the sheets and braces sprawling. No ship ever tacked so fast! And look at the Frenchman!”

Within moments Ramage heard heavier thuds from forward and then, after a whiplash noise like a pistol shot in a valley, the
Calypso
leapt forward as Southwick's men chopped through the cable, which had done its task of bringing round the
Calypso
's bow in—a minute? Perhaps two.

“North-east by east,” Ramage called to Jackson. That would put the wind on the starboard beam—and mean she was sailing back almost along her own wake.

Suddenly Aitken was banging him on the shoulder and screaming, “Look! Look, for the love of God, look!”

Ramage stared into the darkness in the direction Aitken was pointing. There, almost astern, was the rock and, just north of it, a bulky, black shape. Shape? No, it was almost shapeless! Ramage strained his eyes, then grabbed a proffered night-glass.

Yes, as he had guessed, the French frigate had turned to starboard after suddenly sighting the rock revealed by the
Calypso
's unexpected turn to larboard. She had swung to starboard to miss ramming the rock but, as Ramage had intended, had run on to the hidden shoal stretching north-westward for a couple of hundred yards. Two hundred yards of innocent-looking sea, but only a few feet below the surface and like a monstrous lower jaw, was the layer of jagged rocks of a shoal waiting to rip the bottom out of an unwary ship.

Then an excited Southwick was standing beside him, pumping his hand and bellowing, “It worked, by God! Snatched us round as though we were a bull with a ring in its nose. But,” he added, his voice admonishing, “you ran it damned close, sir! By the time we had the cable snubbed and the ship began to swing, I could dam' near touch that rock with my hand. Did you hear the leadsman?”

“Don't tell me about it,” Ramage said firmly. “We're still sailing and our pursuer isn't, and that's enough!”

The sudden impact, stopping the French ship as she was sailing at about nine knots, had sent all three masts by the board. And seldom, Ramage thought, had “by the board” been such an accurate description: the masts snapped at deck level (“by the board”) as cleanly as trampled bluebell stalks and collapsed forward. The foremast went over the bow, tumbling down on the bowspirit and jib-boom; the mainmast crashed down on to the stump of the foremast; and the mizen had followed. Spread over the wreckage, like a great fishing net tossed aside carelessly, the standing and running rigging softened the harsh line of broken masts and slewed yards. Beneath all that wreckage, men must be trapped. Many would be dead. He turned away to face Sir Henry.

“You're a lucky gambler!” Sir Henry said, still almost shapeless in borrowed oilskins, and shook him by the hand. “How you judged when to let go the anchor so that it bit in time for us to swing and miss the rock, I don't know—”

“Better not ask, sir,” Ramage said.

“Well, you did it, and in my letter to the Board I shall say it was fine judgement. And you, Mr Southwick. You must have been running about on the fo'c's'le, but you didn't even lose your hat!”

“It's well anchored down, sir,” Southwick said, tugging locks of his flowing white hair.

“What now, Mr Ramage?” Sir Henry asked, and Ramage recognized the tone. That was the trouble with being lucky: everyone then started expecting miracles.

T
IME and time again the
Calypso
pitched and snubbed sharply like an angry tethered bull as the cable groaned. Nevertheless, considering they had anchored the ship in the dark using only the lead to keep them from running up onto the shoal, and were determined to be within gunshot of the stranded Frenchmen at daylight, Ramage was quite content.

The
Calypso
was headed south-east, into the wind with the middle rock of the Formiche di Grosseto, for which they had been steering last night, now on the starboard bow—a jagged, black tooth growing from a smother of spray. The French frigate was on the starboard beam, a cable distant.

“She's so much like us to look at … and all I can think is that's how we'd look if we'd run on to the bank!” Southwick said.

“I've been thinking that ever since I had a good look at dawn,” Aitken said.

Ramage laughed dryly. “I hope you've both learned a lesson: that's what happens if you have a poor navigator, or keep a poor lookout.”

“That wasn't what put him up there,” Southwick protested.

“No, and that's the third lesson: never assume the ship you're following knows where she is or is keeping a sharp lookout,” Ramage said, “and if she's an enemy, assume she's going to play a trick.”

“Don't keep on, sir,” Aitken pleaded, “or you'll have me shedding tears of remorse over the way we led that poor Frenchman astray.”

Ramage examined the “poor Frenchman” once again with his telescope. Yes, from the moment the Frenchman began his turn to starboard, he was doomed. If he'd turned to larboard immediately, following the
Calypso,
he would still have hit the rock, because he had no time to let go an anchor to stop and then turn him quickly. By turning to starboard he had just missed the rock, passing it close to larboard, only—as Ramage had intended—to drive up on the rocky shoal stretching north-west from the rock.

The frigate would bounce from rock to rock for a few yards with an impact that must have ripped her bottom as it sent her masts by the board, before heeling to starboard and coming to rest, still looking as though any moment she might topple off the edge of the shoal into deep water and sink.

Although the sea had eased down a little since last night, the waves still made a foaming white collar round the rock and swept on to hit the Frenchman's stern, frequently driving green seas unbroken over her quarterdeck. Already the stern-lights of the captain's cabin had been stove in and seas swept through, to pour down into the gunroom. She must be holed badly. In fact, staring at her in the circle shown by the glass, it was clear that despite the largest of the swell waves swirling round her, she was not lifting to any of them. She was inert, resting (impaled, rather) on the hidden rocks of the shoal.

The stricken ship was heeled so far that the men in the
Calypso
had the same view as a gull flying high over her starboard side.

As Ramage had seen fleetingly in the night before, her masts had gone at deck level, each falling forward. The foremast had crashed down on the fo'c's'le and launched the topmast on to the bowspirit, while the topgallant mast had gone like a giant javelin into the jib-boom, carrying it away so that it was crumpled over the bow like a giant's broken fishing rod.

All the standing and running rigging—shrouds which should keep the masts braced athwartships, stays holding them fore and aft, the halyards for hoisting the yards, and the braces for trimming them—all this cordage looked like a carelessly thrown gladiator's net. The yards themselves were slewed across the deck; some, broken, hung over the side. Sails, what was left of them, fluttered like shredded bedsheets, dark patches showing where the sea sluiced over the canvas and occasionally, like a dog shaking itself, throwing up fine spray.

Yet Ramage was less interested in all that than what was stowed on deck amidships and what was hanging from davits aft.

“There are two boats on the booms amidships which don't seem to be damaged,” he told Aitken. “Why the devil they weren't crushed I don't know. Some wreckage—from the mizen-mast, probably—has stove in the boat in the larboard quarter davit, but the one on the starboard quarter—the one you can see—looks undamaged.”

“So some of the Frenchmen can row on shore and raise the alarm,” Aitken commented.

“When the sea has eased down. They'd never launch a boat in this. In fact, they've only one useful boat for the time being, the one in the quarter davits—because without masts, and thus stay tackles, they can't hoist out the boom boats.”

“No, but with a calmer sea they can manhandle them and just shove ‘em over the side and then bail,” Southwick commented.

“Oh yes,” Ramage agreed. “We've got to smash them all before we leave. And, because she's so heeled over she can't aim a single gun at us, we can take our time.”

“At the moment we can't aim a gun at them either,” Southwick grumbled. “Not until we get a spring on our cable.”

“Exactly,” Ramage said, “and now you gentlemen have had a morning promenade and digested your breakfast, let's get a spring on our cable and start knocking some holes in those boats before our friends launch them and row on shore.”

As Southwick bustled forward and Aitken started giving orders, using the speaking-trumpet, Ramage looked towards the east. The coastline was little more than a bluish-grey line low on the horizon, rising slightly to the north to form Punta Ala, and again to the south where Monte dell' Uccellina slid down to Talamone. The
scirocco
haze was too thick to see Monte Argentario or the island of Giglio—and, more important, it was unlikely that a watcher on the nearest shore (the flat coastline each side of the river Ombrone) would be able to see a couple of frigates at the Formiche di Grosseto.

He saw Sir Henry coming up the quarterdeck ladder, and as he could see the rest of the hostages examining the wreck from the main-deck, he was thankful that Sir Henry must have said something which kept them off the quarterdeck.

“Well, she's there for good, eh?” Sir Henry said cheerfully, gesturing at the wreck. “And I doubt if they'll be able to see a hulk like that from the mainland until this
scirocco
clears up. Her profile isn't much bigger than the dam' rock!”

“No, it's only the
Calypso
that sticks out like a sore thumb, and most likely we'd be mistaken for her, sir,” Ramage said.

“Exactly. But her boats … ?”

Sir Henry was being tactful.

“Two on the booms haven't been damaged, nor the one you see in the starboard quarter davits. Still, I'll soon be making sure they won't swim again. We're just putting a spring on the cable now, sir.”

“Good, good,” Sir Henry said, but left unspoken the “Then what?” Putting the French frigate on the shoal had—well, only wrecked the French frigate; it had not solved the problem of the wives. Were the former hostages wondering if he would now decide he had carried out his orders, declaring they made no mention of wives? The orders did not, of course, and Sir Henry knew that. And Sir Henry probably knew that many frigate captains (and captains of 74s, too, for that matter) would stick to the precise wording and make for Gibraltar.

Ramage waved towards the big, black rock of the Formica Maggiore in sight to the north of them, and forming the northern end of the Formiche di Grosseto, and then turned to gesture at the swirl of broken water in the distance ahead, which showed the southernmost of the three rocks.

“Favourite fishing area for the local people,” Ramage said. “Boats come down from Punta Ala and Rocchette, and out from Castiglione della Pescaia. And up from Talamone and Santo Stefano.”

“Yes, they would,” Sir Henry agreed.

“Still, they stay in harbour when there's a
scirocco
blowing.”

Sir Henry nodded, content to let Ramage make his point in his own fashion.

“Once it's blown out, they'll be out here fishing. And they'll see the wreck. They'll come straight over to see what pickings there are, expecting plenty of rope and timber. They'll find the French crew still on board,” Ramage continued, almost dreamily, and Sir Henry realized that he was thinking aloud. “Still on board, because even if they'd made a raft, they'd never reach the shore with a north-going current.

“But not for a couple of days … I can't see the fishermen venturing out before then. The French persuade or threaten, so that the fishermen take the captain and a few others on shore. To Talamone or Castiglione … No, most probably Rocchette, because that'd be a run or a broad reach.

“The nearest French headquarters to Rocchette?” Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “Grosseto, I should think. That must be a good thirty miles from Rocchette. The French frigate captain arrives in Grosseto and reports—yes, it would have to be to the army—that he's stuck on the Formiche di Grosseto, and there's a British frigate on the loose somewhere.”