Ramage & the Renegades (39 page)

“Mamma mia!”
Paolo exclaimed. “We've smashed half her transom with the first broadside!”

“Only half? All those twelve-pounders loaded with grapeshot should have done more than that!”

Grapeshot: they sounded innocent enough to a landman, but even for a twelve-pounder they were formidable. Nine small iron balls, each weighing a pound (and the size of a duck's egg) comprised a single round. Each of the
Calypso
's guns on the starboard side had blasted nine 1-pound shot into the
Lynx;
one after another, like a funeral bell tolling, until eighteen rounds had been fired—a total of 162 grapeshot.

Now the frigate was almost round again, bracing the yards and trimming the sails as the eye of the wind passed across her stern. Now she was steering south-east on the larboard tack to cross the
Lynx
's stern again.

“They're opening her ports, sir! I can see a gun run out!”

“They have only half ports,” Ramage shouted above the thumping of the sails and squeaking of rope rendering through blocks. “Only
one
gun?”

“She's rolling, sir. I can see a second gun on this side. But—well, both have been run in. Now they're running them out again!”

Ramage realized what was happening. “The grapeshot have cut the breechings. The guns are running in and out as she rolls. But why the rolling? Has she cut her cable?”

Paolo snatched the telescope from the binnacle drawer and adjusted the focus. “Yes, sir! She's drifting! Some men are cutting the gaskets on her mainsail!”

Southwick was standing beside the chair. “I took us too close that time, sir,” he said apologetically. “The gun captains complain we passed the
Lynx
too fast. They want us about fifty yards off.”

“You'll have to bear away: they've cut their cable and are drifting.”

Southwick peered ahead and gave a helm order to Jackson and at almost the same moment Ramage heard the groan of the tiller ropes rendering round the barrel of the wheel as the helmsmen pulled at the spokes.

“She's not drifting fast,” the Master commented. “Half a knot; perhaps a little more.”

The trouble was, every yard of drift to leeward took the privateer towards the cliffs which ran in a curve round to the headland to the south-west. That section of the bay had not been surveyed yet. The
Calypso
could very easily slam into a reef, or even a single rock, that the
Lynx
with her much shallower draught could pass over without noticing it.

“You'd better have a man ready with the lead,” Ramage said to Southwick, who sniffed.

“He's standing by, sir, but the muzzle blast from the guns could bowl him over.”

Ramage bit off a sarcastic retort: the
Lynx
was turning slightly to starboard as she drifted. In a few moments she would be in the sights of the first gun on the larboard side.

“Orsini! Tell Mr Wagstaffe to load the guns on the starboard side with round shot. Use round shot in all guns after the larboard guns have fired.”

Southwick looked round, having heard the instruction. “Aye, sir, the grapeshot is just pecking at her!”

But the Master was wrong. “Don't judge it by what you see on the transom!” Just imagine all that grape sweeping through the ship from stern to bow. Cutting the beggars down in swathes!”

The second and third guns fired almost simultaneously, followed by the fourth, fifth and sixth. The longer range—fifty yards, perhaps a little more—gave the gun captains more time to adjust the elevation. The training would stay the same, about at right angles to the
Calypso
's centreline, and each gun captain would tug on his trigger line, attached to the flintlock, as the
Lynx
slid from forward aft across his field of view.

Now the smoke was pouring aft and rising over the quarterdeck. He held his breath, then tried to breathe shallowly, but in a few moments he was gasping and then coughing and once again it felt as though his left arm would burst under the jabs of a sharp knife.

A heavy double thud almost beside him warned that the last two guns had fired and Southwick, yelling “That's it; round we go again!”, began shouting into the speaking-trumpet to wear the frigate. Ramage saw a pall of dust lying over the privateer, the surest sign that the shot were tearing into the wood and slowly ripping the ship apart.

Again sails slatted; the yards creaked and rope rattled the sheaves of the blocks as the
Calypso
seemed to spin and back almost in her original wake, only this time with her starboard guns slowly coming to bear. The first half dozen had fired when suddenly Ramage saw a huge ball of flame and felt, rather than heard, a roaring blast, and everything went black.

S
OUTHWICK was sitting in the chair by his cot. Ramage's arm felt as though the point of a cutlass blade was still embedded in it. But his right leg—the lower part felt heavy. And painful—especially when he tried to move his foot.

“Good evening, sir,” Southwick said and sniffed. A relieved sniff, Ramage noticed through a haze made up of dizziness, pain—and, he was surprised to discover, hunger.

“Keep absolutely still, sir, while I pass the word for Bowen. He's been very busy.”

Busy
—the word chilled Ramage. “Wait—” the word came out as a croak: his throat was sore. “Have we lost a lot of men? What happened? All that flame—”

“Easy, sir,” Southwick said reassuringly, pushing Ramage back in the cot. “Only two men dead, but twenty or more wounded.”

“Oh God.” So he had failed. It had looked so simple. It was so simple. Get the
Calypso
under way and tack and wear across the
Lynx
's stern firing raking broadsides until she surrendered. They were firing the third when there was that dreadful flash.

“Let me pass the word for Bowen, sir.” The Master went to the door and spoke to the Marine sentry, and when he came back he said, almost accusingly: “You've lost a lot more blood again. No one realized the quarterdeck had caught it.”

“Why?” Ramage hardly recognized the noise that came out when he spoke.

“Well, young Orsini and I were over the side in the sea, Jackson was unconscious and the two men at the wheel were dead.”

“What were you doing … in the sea?” His head was spinning; he was spiralling down and down as though caught in a whirlpool, and night had fallen before he came round again, to find Southwick dozing in an armchair, the sleeping cabin lit by a lantern.

His brain was muddled. He had dreamed that Southwick had been swimming in the sea with Orsini. Curiously enough the Master's hair was plastered down on his head, as though still damp and sticky from salt water.

Southwick saw that Ramage's eyes were open and jumped up at once to kneel beside the cot.

“Before you pass out again, sir, Bowen wants to know if you're warm enough, thirsty or hungry.”

“Thirsty,” Ramage said, and then repeated it, trying out his voice and finding it was still hoarse but nearer normal. “Hot soup.”

Then he remembered something. Not only had he dreamed Southwick and Orsini were swimming together, but there was talk of him losing a lot of men. And what was he doing here in his cot anyway?

“What happened?”

Southwick sniffed—had he not just done that? “You get a warm drink inside you and some food, and I'll tell you what I know. Mr Wagstaffe's in no state to talk at the moment, no more is Jackson, and the other officers weren't on board: they only saw it from the shore …”

“But that terrible flash …”

“Yes, yes, sir,” Southwick said soothingly, “all in good time. Bowen is most anxious you don't get excited.”

“Excited!” Ramage grumbled wearily. “How can I help it when you won't tell me anything?”

Southwick finally caught the despair in his Captain's voice and as he walked to the door to talk to the sentry said over his shoulder: “Don't you worry, sir. There's nothing to worry about.”

When the Master came back, having ordered hot soup, he found Ramage propped up on his right elbow, a wild look in his eye, his hair matted and filled with dust. “The
Earl of Dodsworth
,” he muttered, “something happened to her!”

Southwick looked puzzled. “She's all right, sir. The hostages were a bit startled, I expect, but that's all.”

“And the rest of the hostages?”

“They're quite safe, sir. There's nothing to worry about. Once you've a pint of hot soup inside you, I'll tell you all I know. And Bowen will be here in a few minutes for a chat about that leg of yours.”

Leg, for God's sake. An arm and a leg. Anything, it seemed, to prevent him getting over to the
Earl of Dodsworth.
Not that he had any excuse to go over, he told himself. She would have seen the attack and whatever happened next. At the moment she probably knew more than he did.

The sentry's hail told him that Bowen was coming, and even by the dim light of the lantern Ramage could see that the surgeon was exhausted.

“What happened?” Ramage asked. “Southwick won't tell me a damn thing. Why did we have so many casualties? We oughtn't to have lost a man. Was it because I was knocked out? Did—”

He was running the words together, almost as though he was drunk, and Bowen knelt beside the cot and without answering motioned to Southwick to bring the lantern. Then he pushed up one of Ramage's eyelids, inspected the eyeball for a few moments and then felt the pulse in his right wrist.

“How do you feel, sir?”

Ramage seemed to stir himself at the question. “I'm all right. The arm is better but why is my right leg so stiff? It doesn't hurt much but I can't use it!”

“Don't try to for a few days: it's bandaged up. I don't think you've broken a bone, but several muscles were wrenched and there's considerable swelling.”

“But what happened?” Ramage, his voice getting stronger, had clearly recovered enough to become angry. Recovered enough, Bowen guessed, to try to scramble out of his cot—and probably fall over as it swung slightly. The cot, being a rectangular box slung low in what was little more than a large hammock, was easily capsized by someone trying to get out to one side without distributing his weight evenly.

A knock on the door and Silkin's voice heralded the arrival of the soup, which Ramage drank from a large mug with ill grace as Southwick supported him. He swallowed it all, refused more, and said to Bowen: “Well, now tell me.”

“Southwick will tell you the earlier part in a moment. I am treating 23 men, apart from yourself, for various kinds of wounds, from widespread contusions to broken limbs. Jackson was hit across the head but should be fully recovered in the next 24 hours. Two men are dead—the men at the wheel. An enormous splinter seems to have spun across the deck and cut them down.”

“None of the 23 are in any danger, then?”

“No, sir: I've got them all cleaned up and bandaged, and where necessary, splints have been applied.”

“What happened to Southwick and Orsini, then?”

Bowen gestured towards the Master, and Southwick said: “Well, sir, you probably want to hear the whole story. I can tell you most of it; it's just the last part that someone like Stafford will have to tell.

“You remember we were just crossing the
Lynx
's stern for the third time? I'd said the gunners wanted us to pass farther off, to give them more time to see the target. Then we started firing that third broadside. The first six guns had just fired after I'd said something about ‘Now round we go again!' and that the grapeshot didn't seem to be doing more harm than a woodpecker—”

“Yes, yes,
go on!
” Ramage said impatiently.

“Well, that's very nearly the end of the story. There was an enormous flash and bang, and there was just a big ball of smoke where the
Lynx
had been. What was left of her—lengths of planking, chunks of masts and yards, even bits of bodies—were hurled for hundreds of yards. Scores of big pieces of timber hit us, sir, some coming in almost horizontally like round shot, some falling on us a few moments later like sleet. But the force of the explosion, sir! It blew me and Orsini off the quarterdeck clear over the bulwarks into the sea. A dozen others were blown over from the main-deck, and we were all swimming round in circles while the
Calypso
sailed on with no one in command and no one at the wheel.”

It was too much to comprehend, Ramage decided, listening to this story lying in his cot and watching Southwick's suntanned face in the light of a guttering lantern … “Well, then what happened?”

“Stafford can best tell you about the ship, because he led a group of men and hove her to. Those of us in the water swam round in the wreckage wondering what would happen next, then we saw the ship heaving-to and suddenly we were being hauled into the two survey boats, which you remember we saw getting away from the beach. As soon as we were all on board they rowed like madmen towards the
Calypso,
and I saw then that Mr Martin had reached the ship from the
Earl of Dodsworth
and I guessed he was staying hove-to until our two boats reached him. Mr Aitken was rowing over from the
Friesland.
I'd guessed Mr Wagstaffe was out of action. To be honest, sir, I thought he'd been killed, along with you: I couldn't see how anyone could live through that explosion unless he was lucky enough to be blown clear over the side.”

“What did happen to Wagstaffe?”

Bowen coughed and took over the story. “He knows nothing more than you and Jackson about the explosion, sir. You were all knocked out together. But (and this I saw as I ran up on deck; because the action was over, it was easier to start treating men there than carry them below) Stafford was getting some men together. They were stunned from the explosion but very quickly he had them backing the fore-topsail.