The Ramage Touch (27 page)

The gunner was a mild-mannered little man, once an artilleryman who had deserted from the royal service and, swept up by the Revolution, had joined the Navy, where his knowledge of guns had brought him rapid promotion. He had enjoyed the promotion but not service at sea. His only previous knowledge of water had been watching the Loire flow past his little home at Tours, on the Quai d’Orléans almost opposite the Ile Aucard, just where the ferrymen came alongside the rickety wooden jetty, usually drunk and always cursing – not at anything in particular, but because the Loire flowed strongly on its way down to Angers and Nantes, before emptying into the Atlantic. In fact the Atlantic was usually the target of the ferryman’s curses; the Loire, he complained, was always in too much of a hurry to get swallowed up by the Atlantic.

The shell which exploded blasted through the bulkheads with the result that in a fraction of a second the half-opened cask of powder went up and sent off the rest of the magazine, nine tons of powder. Not all of it was meant for the ship; five tons were for the flagship which they were due to meet in Crete, and one ton was for the garrison. They were due to embark another ton which the artillerymen were supposed to be bringing with them; in fact, it was the knowledge that more casks of powder were due later in the day that had made the gunner call his mate to help fill some cartridge cases: the arrival of more casks would so restrict the room in the magazine that the work would be twice as difficult.

The shell was the third fired by the
Fructidor
. Although Ramage thought she had fired without interruption. Kenton had watched the fall of the first shell from the forward mortar and even as Jackson and Stafford were touching their linstocks to the powder at the after mortar and Rossi was beginning to swab out the forward one, Kenton had ordered the spring to be slackened away two fathoms.

This meant that when the mortar next fired the shell burst a few feet more to the south. The first shell had burst to the north of the frigate which was now heading for her; the correction made by Kenton had been a little too much – one fathom would have been enough – and the effect was that the shell landed on top of the southern frigate, not the northern one, reducing her magazine to a smoke-filled void into which the gunner and his mate had vanished. The two-fathom correction had, in fact, led to the northern frigate escaping and, in her rush for the open sea, steering to pass close to the
Fructidor
, to destroy these scoundrels who captured French bomb ketches, sailed and anchored them under French colours, and then suddenly ran up British colours and opened fire.

As the French frigate raced towards them from the west and the
Calypso
came thundering along from the north, the men grouped round Kenton and Orsini at the mainmast.

‘Yer know wot?’ demanded Stafford, and when no one answered he continued: ‘It’s like standing at a crossroads, wiv a highwayman galloping towards you from one direction, and a cavalryman coming along another to rescue you.’

‘What about the other two roads?’ Rossi asked. ‘The difference is you can’t escape up the other ones.’

‘That’s true,’ Stafford said philosophically. ‘In fact I’m a beautiful woman tied to the tree, and there’s my true love on his white ’orse–’ he pointed towards the
Calypso
‘–and there’s the ’orrible villain wot wants to kidnap me.’

As he pointed at the French frigate Orsini said, in the deepest voice he could produce: ‘I’m afraid the ’orrible villain is going to get you first.’

‘Yus,’ Stafford agreed equably. ‘I shall give an ’orrible girlish scream, wave to my distant lover (that’s Mr Ramage, of course) and get swep’ orf to a fate worse than death. I can’t akshully imagine a fate worse than death, but that’s wot they always say.’

Orsini produced his pistol and said firmly: ‘I shall fire at the frigate just as she hits us, or opens fire.’ With that he cocked the pistol and Jackson leapt to one side, ‘Steady on, sir,’ he exclaimed nervously. ‘You’ll kill someone if you’re not careful.’

The American began to laugh when he realized the significance of what he had said. ‘Well, I’m sure none of us is in any hurry, sir.’ Then he added, after looking at the two approaching frigates: ‘This is such a good race I don’t want to miss any of it.’

‘Nah,’ said the irrepressible Stafford, ‘it’s the first time you’ve ever been a prize, I’ll bet. If this was Newmarket ’eath, I’d say you’d be worth your weight in guineas.’

Paolo was rather angry. Not entirely angry, but he knew that if he was still living in the palace at Volterra he would be curt with the servants. Not an angriness of the
fegato
, or in other words induced by the liver, just anger that, having unexpectedly blown up one enemy frigate, they were about to be blown up by another.

The English had a phrase for it, ‘tit for tat’, but the English were hopelessly impractical about this sort of thing. He had been surprised to find out from the Captain that the English regarded Machiavelli as ‘rather a scoundrel’, and tended to get sentimental about their enemies after they had won a victory. If the French won this war, then they would set up guillotines in every town in Britain, and execute anyone who had two pennies to rub together on the grounds that he was an aristo. If the English won, or rather
when
they won, they would probably dance in the streets with the French and tell them how naughty it was of them to have executed their royal family.

Surprising how time slowed down at moments like this, Paolo thought to himself: the enemy is steering straight for us at six knots or more and fear slows things down so that you can have quite complicated thoughts. Still, as the frigate got closer the thoughts became less complicated. Aunt Gianna would be proud of the way he had died. But she would probably never know, because the Captain would not have seen that it was a shell from the
Fructidor
’s mortar that blew up the other French frigate.

He wished, as he stood under the hot Italian sun, that he had studied mathematics more carefully with Mr Southwick, who was such a patient man. It was a pity Mr Southwick did not have a son, because he would make a wonderful father – or grandfather rather. Anyway one could only hope that he knew that Paolo Orsini was grateful.

The Captain was just a few hundred yards away: he would be standing at the quarterdeck rail, his deepset brown eyes sunk even deeper, the skin of his face taut, almost tight over the high cheekbones, his nose like an eagle’s beak (though not so curved, of course) as though he was about to peck. His voice would be calm and
he
would be calm. He would tell Aunt Gianna what had happened – at least, as much as he knew of it.

Who would rule Volterra after Aunt Gianna died? Would she marry the Captain and have a son who would become the ruler? He hoped so. A boy who had Aunt Gianna for a mother and the Captain for a father would grow up a man among men and fit to rule.

He turned, intending to shake hands with the rest of the men, starting off with Kenton, but he stumbled over the thick rope of the spring. As he regained his balance he looked at the French frigate. Her masts now beginning to tower high so that all the mountains beyond were lower. Then he looked at the
Calypso
. Her masts were lower, too, which meant that she was just that much farther away. Not much in it – he knew that from his very recent experience of measuring the heights of masts with the quadrant.

‘Can’t be a hundred yards in it,’ Kenton murmured. ‘I think now is the time to say goodbye, so thanks, men, at least we took a French frigate with us. But we’ve run out of surprises…’

The spring. Paolo looked at the pile of rope. Twenty fathoms or more of it, more than a hundred feet. The spring was holding the
Fructidor
well over to the north-east of where her anchor was lying; holding her so that the wind, instead of blowing from the bow, was almost on the starboard beam.

He turned to Kenton, after a quick glance at the French frigate, which was now steering almost directly at them, making sure that, when she turned, her broadside would be fired at less than fifty yards’ range.

‘If we let the spring go, we’ll swing right across the Frenchman’s bow,’ Paolo said calmly, but louder than he had intended. ‘Either he’ll ram us or have to bear away suddenly. If he has to bear away his gunners are likely to miss because she’ll be swinging…’

But Kenton was no longer standing there: with a bellow of ‘Quick, men!’ he had leapt at the spring and begun flinging the turns off the kevel. Jackson was the first to react, and within moments the rope, like a coiled snake, was free and beginning to race out of the gunport, with Jackson bellowing at them to kick and pull out the kinks and bights in case it all twisted into a tangled mess and jammed in the port.

Paolo stood up and looked across at the
Calypso
and then at the Feniglia beyond her. For several moments the
Fructidor
’s bow remained steady, as though the ship had run aground; then he thought he detected a slight movement just as he heard a splash when the last of the spring slid into the water. It was too slight and too slow; he could already hear the thunder and hiss of the French frigate’s bow wave and the occasional thump as a sail flapped.

Ramage knew that not only had he made a grave mistake but he had probably killed Paolo, Kenton, Jackson, Rossi and Stafford, and the rest of the men whose names he could not for the moment remember. He had probably killed them all because he must have measured the distance from the harbour entrance to the Feniglia and back wrongly. He was unlikely to have done that, he decided, so he must have relied too much on a chart which he knew couldn’t be accurate to a few hundred yards. Not accurate for longer distances like those, although it would be accurate enough in giving the width between the headlands forming the harbour, or the length of Isolotto…

He should have allowed for chart error of up to a cable. Two hundred yards would have been enough; two hundred yards would mean that at this moment the
Calypso
would be between that damned French frigate and the
Fructidor
. Not just between them, but forcing the Frenchman to turn away and fight, ship to ship. The fight would have been the fairest ever fought in the Mediterranean, or anywhere else for that matter, because they were identical ships.

He looked again at the French frigate, her mastheads beginning to tower high fine on the starboard bow, waiting for the tell-tale flap of the luffs and leeches of her sails or the rush of men to sheets and braces that would warn him the moment she began to turn away. Two hundred yards to go, one hundred and seventy-five, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and twenty-five…That was curious, it was still about one hundred and twenty-five…

‘The bomb’s swinging! She’s swinging!’ Southwick was bellowing. In his excitement he slapped his captain on the back. ‘Oh, just look at her, sir!’

‘She’s slipped her spring,’ said Aitken, matter-of-factly. ‘That’s surprised those Frenchmen!’

‘Aye, the
Fructidor
’s swinging right across her bow! Will they dare ram the bomb? One of her masts might whip one of their yards out! By God,’ Southwick shouted, ‘we’ll have them yet!’

Ramage snatched the speaking-trumpet from Aitken’s hand, put it to his lips and was startled when a roaring voice he did not recognize as his own hurled itself at the seamen at the guns below him.

‘Stand by down there!’ he bellowed. ‘There’s just a chance we’ll save ’em. Starboard guns, there: open fire as the target bears, and keep on firing until she strikes her colours!’

The men cheered and yelled in reply as he handed the speaking-trumpet back to Aitken, who said excitedly: ‘They’re beginning to turn away, sir–’

They could turn before they had intended and yet still give the
Fructidor
a broadside; that much was obvious. But although the race to interpose the
Calypso
between the frigate and the bomb ketch was over, there was time for a quick sidestep.

He snatched back the speaking-trumpet, yelled at the men at the wheel to turn four points to larboard and, speaking trumpet to his mouth, turned again to the men at the guns. ‘Listen down there!’ he roared. ‘You’re going to see that Frenchman for less than a minute, and the range will be about a hundred yards. Aim for the hull, otherwise the
Fructidor
will get their whole broadside!’

He turned away. Damnation, this was like the Mall with three horses bolting at once: to come round to larboard far enough for the
Calypso
’s starboard-side guns to bear meant that he would have to shave under the
Fructidor
’s stern the moment the guns had fired…Still, there was no choice!

The Frenchman was broad on the bow as the
Calypso
swung one way to bring her guns to bear and the Frenchman turned the other in a desperate last-moment attempt to dodge the broadside they now saw would hit them.

‘Here they come!’ Ramage found himself roaring into the speaking-trumpet and it seemed from all round him there was the popping of muskets as Renwick’s Marines fired at the Frenchman’s quarterdeck. The 12-pounders thundered in a rippling fire one after the other down the starboard side, but Ramage hardly heard them because of the blood beating in his ears. He saw puffs as the guns fired, and then thick clouds of oily-yellow smoke as the puffs merged and began to stream out of the ports…An enormous cough, another and then another as the carronades almost beside him fired, flinging the lemon-sized grapeshot into the French ship.

He glimpsed the
Fructidor
only a few yards away and almost dead ahead. ‘Hard a’ starboard,’ he bellowed at the men at the wheel.

Smoke and noise – the heavy thudding of roundshot hitting solid wood, the whine of splinters being thrown up in swathes, the bell-like clanging of roundshot ricocheting from metal…the Frenchmen had let go their broadside at the
Calypso
, tit for tat. Now the men were scurrying around reloading and – hellfire and damnation, any moment the
Calypso
will be so far round she would be taken a’back – no, the men were spinning the wheel, almost climbing up the spokes in their urgency – and Aitken was standing beside them, looking as calm as if he was just checking that the gillie’s gralloching knife was sharp enough before they cleaned the deer he had just shot.