Ramage And The Drum Beat (23 page)

With that he jumped down from the bulwark feeling as melodramatic as an actor who’d just recited Henry Vs speech on the eve of St Crispin’s Day – though omitting the beginning, ‘He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart…’

As he walked to the companionway, the men still cheering, he thought wrily of an earlier phrase in the play, ‘I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.’ His fame was such that he’d need only a small pot of very poor ale.

Ramage took off his sword in the tiny cabin and when Jackson brought down a large leather pouch, he unlocked it and transferred the books and documents it contained to his desk. The key was still in the lock of the drawer – only the little lead-lined box usually kept beneath the desk and now sunk in about a thousand fathoms was missing. He’d have to get another made.

He sat down heavily. It was not just physical weariness: his brain was tired. He longed for a week’s rest with no decisions to be made, no need to be constantly goading himself, and free from the constant fear that a moment’s relaxation would let the enemy – either Spaniards or weather – get one move ahead. To go to sleep without the fear that he’d be wakened only to deal with yet another emergency.

The Commissioner’s words still rang in his ears. ‘Yours is the only vessel we can send after Sir John… If I had three frigates, I’d use ’em all: but there’s only your cutter. Make no mistake, Ramage, find Sir John you must. You know what’s at stake. Drive the ship and drive the men as you’ve never driven ’em before, even if you get a gale a day. If you see a frigate, give her captain one of the sets of orders I’m having drawn up. Go from one rendezvous to the next. If you find a neutral ship, wring the master’s neck if that’s the only way to make him say whether or not he’s seen Sir John’s squadron. And,’ he’d added grimly, ‘if you fail, don’t offer any excuses.’

Find Sir John’s squadron… Ramage reached out for the chart. Precious little he had to go on. Sir John had sailed from Lisbon, leaving the Tagus on 18th January with eleven sail of the line to escort some Portuguese men o’ war and a Brazil convoy southwards to a safe latitude. (How far south was ‘safe’?)

Having done that, Sir John intended to work his way back to the rendezvous off Cape St Vincent to meet any reinforcements the Admiralty had been able to send from England. He certainly needed them. The Commissioner – who was in a difficult position since officially he had no executive authority over Ramage – did not expect Sir John to be back at the rendezvous before about 12th February.

Once through the Strait and out into the Atlantic, the rendezvous off Cape St Vincent (the south-western tip of Portugal and one of the most forbidding headlands on the Atlantic coast) was 170 miles away to the north-west. With an easterly wind, the Kathleen could be there in about thirty-four hours, assuming an average of five knots.

If Sir John, the reinforcements or a frigate were not there, Ramage decided he would head down towards the Canaries – that would be the route Sir John would take with the Brazil ships – for three days, and then return to the rendezvous. That increased the chances of finding Sir John farther to the south, so the Fleet would have less distance to cover to intercept the Spaniards before they reached Cadiz.

Jackson appeared at the companionway. ‘Mr Southwick’s respects, sir: the cable’s up and down.’

The Master was waiting by the taffrail. ‘Very well, Mr Southwick, let’s get under way. And remember,’ he added quietly, ‘with no other ship here, every telescope on shore is going to be trained on us… Jackson, I want you at the helm.’

Southwick nodded, picked up his speaking trumpet and began bellowing orders. Soon the two headsails and the great mainsail were hoisted, the gaff and boom swinging lazily from one side to the other and the canvas of the headsails rippling as the wind blew down both sides of them, finding nothing to exert its force on.

Once again the windlass creaked as men heaved down on the bars (why, Ramage thought idly, don’t they fit cutters with capstans?) and slowly the heavy cable came home, water squeezing out of the strands and streaming back down the deck. A seaman watching over the bow signalled to Southwick – the anchor stock was in sight.

‘I’ll take the conn, Mr Southwick.’

The Kathleen had a little sternway which Ramage used to pay off the bow to starboard. He gave an order to the men at the helm, another to the men at the sheets, and the wind filled the great mainsail with a bang. Slowly she began forging ahead.

Ramage was just going to tell Southwick to set the gaff-topsail when he saw a dark shadow moving fast across the water between the cutter and shore, a shadow rapidly becoming dappled with white-capped wavelets: one of the sudden white squalls for which Gibraltar was notorious.

‘Ease sheets, Mr Southwick: smartly now!’

Turning to Jackson and the man with him, he yelled, ‘Meet this squall! Here – you two men: stand by the helm!’

Then it was on them: although invisible it seemed solid, snatching their breath and screaming shrill in the rigging, slashing off the wave tops and driving them to leeward like heavy rain. Under the wind’s enormous pressure the Kathleen heeled over until the water swirled in at the gunports. Ramage saw that although the helm was hard over in an attempt to keep the cutter on course, she was being forced to round up into the wind and head for the shore. The headsails were beginning to flog: in a few moments they’d probably explode into a dozen strips of torn canvas.

‘Let the mainsheet run, Mr Southwick!’

The waves slicing up solid over the weather bow were blowing into spray, sparkling briefly in a few moments of weak sun. Then, after what seemed like hours, with Ramage waiting for the sails to blow out or the mast to go by the board, the big boom moved over to leeward as the men slacked the sheet, easing the pressure on the mainsail, which had been forcing the cutter’s bow up into the wind. Almost immediately her angle of heel lessened and as the men eased the helm to bring the Kathleen back on course the headsails stopped their insensate flogging.

Algeçiras, on the Spanish mainland, was five miles away across Gibraltar Bay on the starboard beam; Europa Point was almost on the larboard beam and he could see past it into the Mediterranean beyond. Ahead on the African coast, eleven miles across the Strait, low cloud streaming in fast from the east now hid the great peaks of Renegado and Sid Musa which ranged parallel with the coast like teeth in a petrified jawbone. For a brief moment he glimpsed the isolated summit of Haffe del Benatz, climbing almost sheer to fifteen hundred feet, and then Marsa farther west.

Soon the cutter turned to head out towards the Atlantic and with the wind aft she rolled violently, the end of the main boom occasionally dipping in the water. Ramage could see the tiny island of Tarifa ahead, with the Moorish town of Tarifa on the mainland, high-walled with several towers sticking up like enormous tree stumps.

The current was west-going at the moment and stronger close inshore, and because he was anxious to gain every yard to the westward Ramage kept as near the mainland as he dared. The Kathleen was at that moment in sight of at least half a dozen Spanish watch-towers and a couple of castles. If they knew of the scrap of paper locked in his desk, horsemen would already be on their way to Madrid. The tiny ship they were mercifully ignoring – too lazy, perhaps even too contemptuous, to fire at – had the potential to defeat the objective of the combined Fleets of France and Spain…

On the south side of the Strait the African coast was trending south-west, but it would be dark before they passed Tangier. Now Tarifa was near – he guessed Admiral Cordoba would also be glad to get it abeam. From there, Cordoba would have a short run of about forty miles north-westward along the coast to Cadiz, passing only two capes, de Gracia and Trafalgar with its off-lying shoals.

The Kathleen, however, had 170 miles to sail before reaching the rendezvous off Cape St Vincent, crossing a gulf notorious for its sudden south-easterly gales which could trap ships so they could neither weather Cape St Vincent at one end nor round Cape Trafalgar to run into the Strait of Gibraltar at the other.

By the time Tarifa was abeam and with darkness falling, Ramage saw the weather was rapidly deteriorating so that only a miracle could save them from an easterly gale by dawn, and he had to decide within the next hour whether to get some shelter by following the Spanish coast as it trended round northward to Cape Trafalgar and Cadiz, or steer direct for Cape St Vincent and risk eventually being forced to run westward before the full force of it, a course which would take him well out into the Atlantic, leaving Cape St Vincent forty or fifty miles to the north.

Prudent seamanship indicated keeping in the lee of the Spanish coast, but the scrap of paper locked in his drawer; not to mention the Commissioner who’d emphasized every word by thumping his fist on the deck as he said, ‘Drive the ship and drive the men as you’ve never driven ’em before, even if you get a gale a day…’ left him with no choice: he must sail direct and risk the gale. There was some consolation that even if the same gale brought Cordoba’s Fleet scudding through the Strait, the Spaniards with their great three-deckers and clumsy transports would have a much harder fight to claw up to Cadiz without getting driven far out into the Atlantic.

The full force of the gale – which was bad even for a Levanter – caught the Kathleen just as she cleared the Strait and entered the Atlantic, with Cape Spartel on her larboard quarter showing where the African coast suddenly swept sharply southward to begin the curve which ended in the Gulf of Guinea, almost on the Equator, while on her starboard beam the mountains of Spain disappeared as they trended north towards Cadiz.

Southwick swore the gale was the worst Levanter he’d ever seen but Ramage, although fearful and yet awed by its majestic, and apparently effortless power, reckoned the Kathleen’s smallness exaggerated it. But it could not have caught them at a worse time: the east wind howling uninterrupted for perhaps a thousand miles across the Mediterranean, was now being funnelled through the narrow Strait by the high mountains of Spain and Africa, compressing and increasing its frenetic power just as it met the full strength of the Atlantic current which was flowing into the Mediterranean. Wind against current; the worst combination of all.

Its enormous strength was piling up great waves which rose and rolled and thrust up crests which the wind slashed off in sheets of spindrift and foam, driving it across crest and trough in long angry veins until the whole surface of the sea seemed a mottled, raging cataract of molten green and white marble.

Ramage, standing beside Southwick at the taffrail and looking aft as one wave after another surged up astern, mountains of water, each steeply sloping side threatening to scoop up the ship, each curling breaker atop it apparently intent on sweeping the decks bare of men and gear, was almost too numbed to wonder that a frail box of wood like the Kathleen could ever survive.

On and on came the seas, relentless, seemingly unending, and even more frightening since each contained its strength in itself, in its very vastness, in the smooth, purposeful and powerful way it surged inwards, rising higher and higher until Ramage, his imagination heightened by fear, tiredness and awe, felt he was looking up at the cataract destined to swamp the whole world. The crest of each wave was a curling, hissing jumble of frothing white water broken only by the Kathleen’s wake which showed on the wave’s face as an insignificant double line of inward-spinning whorls, like the hair springs of clocks.

The hours passed and Ramage was barely conscious of fresh men at the helm as the watches changed. He saw only wave after wave in a wild chase to overtake the cutter. Just as a roaring crest was about to crash down on the Kathleen’s deck, the ship’s stern began to lift (began, it always seemed, just a moment too late), and the bow dip slightly, as if the ship was starting a hesitant curtsy. Suddenly the crest was right under her counter, first lifting the stern even higher and burying the bow deeper on the forward face and then, as the crest slid forward, tipping the ship like a see-saw in a gigantic pitch which would let the stern sink back on the rear face, the bow lifting high in the air as the crest swept on.

As suddenly as it arrived, that wave would be gone: for a few moments the Kathleen would be almost dead in the water, sunk deep in a trough so her tiny spitfire jib was blanketed, starved of wind. Then once again the next wave would race up astern…

Suddenly Southwick pointed. A couple of hundred yards astern a freak wave was rushing down to them. The crest was solid water, still wedge-shaped and still thrusting itself higher.

Even as they watched the wind’s pressure was working on it, and unable to resist its force the crest slowly turned and then toppled to break into a two-foot high rolling, swirling, roaring mass of water sweeping along on the forward side of the wave.

The next moment the cutter dropped into a trough and the wave disappeared from view. Ramage, noting it was the third, saw the first sweep down and pass, turning to make sure Southwick had warned the quartermaster and the men at the helm, banged Southwick on the shoulder and motioned him to grip something firmly, and himself seized an eyebolt beside the stem-chase port. The second wave lifted the cutter enough for Ramage to see the third had grown even larger, rearing up as high as a big house.

In one split second he guessed this time the little Kathleen’s stern would never lift in time to avoid being pooped; that the whole wave would crash down on her and then sweep forward, washing away every man on deck, stoving in skylights and ripping open hatches to send tons of water cascading below, and, with no one at the helm, slew the whole ship round so that she broached, lying broadside on to the next wave and probably heeling over on her beam ends.

With the heavy carronades then hanging vertically and breaking loose from their slides and tackles, and bulky casks of provisions and dozens of round shot stowed below smashing their way through the hull planking, the Kathleen would founder.