Ramage And The Drum Beat (32 page)

Then, as the details of his plan gradually took shape, he realized he wanted a dozen men who were nimble, good with cutlasses, and who’d fight until they were cut or shot down. Who should he choose? Out of the whole ship’s company it was only a question of eliminating the less nimble since everyone met the other requirements. Well, it boiled down to choosing a dozen men to die with him, so first he decided on Jackson and the five who’d been with him at Cartagena.

He told Jackson to hail the five with the speaking trumpet, and picked another half-dozen from those at the guns. As soon as they were all grouped round him he gave them their orders.

‘It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire,’ he concluded as he dismissed them, but he noticed they walked with jaunty strides, obviously delighted at having been chosen. The poor fools, he thought. Yet perhaps they weren’t – he was honest enough to admit he was glad he was going to lead them because he’d no wish to stay in the frying pan.

‘Do we stand a chance, sir?’ Jackson asked quietly.

‘Of telling our grandchildren about it? No, none. Of doing the job – yes. At least an even chance.’

Jackson nodded. ‘I’m glad she isn’t, for her own sake, but the Marchesa’d like to be with us, sir, and Count Pitti.’

‘Yes,’ Ramage said shortly, instinctively feeling the signet ring with his thumb. He had to say it to someone, if only to – well, he felt an aching guilt towards his Kathleens.

‘Jackson, if there was any other way’ – he glanced back at the British line, but except for the Captain steering towards them, it was sailing on, drawing away, although a couple more of the leading ships had tacked – ‘I’d try it but there isn’t…’

‘We know, sir, but none of the lads’d change places with anyone walking down St James’s.’

Ramage looked at his watch. They’d tacked only a few minutes ago. It seemed an hour. His mind was racing and the men were working fast: already the braziers were being hoisted up on deck, and there was a stack of hammocks round the forehatch with others being arranged in piles along the centreline.

The secret papers: he’d forgotten to get a lead-lined box made. He’d use a canvas bag and a roundshot. Jackson would have to put the signal book in at the last moment and then throw the bag over the side. Down in his cabin once again he glanced round as he put the papers in the bag. Few cabins in a ship of war could have such memories for a captain. He shut the top drawer and opened the second. Gianna’s silk scarf was lying there where he’d put it when he came back on board, neatly folded. He picked it up, intending to tie it round his waist, then decided neither smartness nor the custom of the service was important now and knotted it round his neck, tucking the ends under his stock. If he’d brought her any happiness, then now he was going to bring her an equal amount of grief.

Then he was back on deck, looking at the San Nicolas. As she and the rest of the leading ships drew nearer he saw they were farther apart than he first thought.

‘The right ship’s leading ’em, sir,’ commented Jackson as Ramage drew yet another plan showing the position of the ships, this time to help him calculate the best angle of approach.

‘Right ship?’

‘Haven’t you noticed, sir? She’s named after the same saint as you!’

The San Nicolas – no, he hadn’t realized it and said with a grin, ‘Since she’s leading this undignified rush for Cadiz, Jackson, I’ll trouble you not to mention it!’

Jackson laughed. ‘Well, sir, let’s hope he decides to look after you and not the Dons!’

The San Nicolas, Ramage reflected: an 84-gun ship of about two thousand tons compared with the Kathleen’s 160 tons. Why, the Spanish ship’s masts and yards alone would weigh as much as the whole of the Kathleen, while the nose on the figure head of St Nicolas must be about thirty feet above the waterline. The jib-boom end would be all of sixty-five feet high – and that was the height of the Kathleen’s mast… Oh, the devil take it, he told himself angrily, guessing dimensions won’t make the San Nicolas an inch smaller or the Kathleen an inch larger.

‘Any signals to the Captain from the Victory, Jackson?’

‘Can’t see the Victory for smoke, sir; but nothing hoisted in the Captain: no acknowledgements: just her colours.’

Southwick said, ‘Captain Collingwood won’t leave the Commodore unsupported for long, orders or no orders. We’ll soon see the Excellent following the Captain.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Did you expect the Captain to quit the line, sir?’

‘Yes. At least, I hoped she would!’

‘But the Commodore left it a bit late,’ ventured Southwick.

Ramage shrugged his shoulders with feigned indifference. ‘Late for us; but he’s probably just got time to head them off – particularly if we can cause a delay. He won’t have time to get in among the leaders, though.’

‘He’ll go for the Santísima Trinidad?’

Ramage nodded. He knew instinctively that if there was any choice that the Commodore would tackle the largest ship in the world, and by chance she was to leeward of the rest and so nearest to the Captain.

Then Ramage looked at the Spanish ships, at the Captain, at the British line and at the sketches on his pad, and suddenly he knew his plan was not only futile but absurd. Despite what he’d just said to Southwick he knew that even if the Kathleen did manage to delay the Spanish van for fifteen or twenty minutes, the chances of the Captain catching up were slender. But, more important, even if she did she wouldn’t be able to head off all those ships: each one of them had a heavier broadside: all of them would rake her time and again before her own broadsides would bear.

And he knew that even now he could wear round the Kathleen on some pretext or other and return to her proper position, astern of the Excellent. But he was still looking at his sketch of the Kathleen superimposed on the San Nicolas when he realized that, despite what the pencil lines told him, he had to go on because if he turned back now, for the rest of his life he’d never be sure whether it was logic or fear that made him give up.

Once he’d decided to go on he was angry with himself for the alternate bouts of fear and calm, confidence and uncertainty. And then he also realized that although the Commodore might have had similar doubts (though hardly similar fears) he’d nevertheless quit the line and was going to try, and that was all that mattered. If the Kathleen could give him an extra fifteen or twenty minutes, they might make all the difference between complete failure and a partial success…

And he must put a term to idle thoughts and daydreams: the San Nicolas was coming up fast, and there was no room for mistakes. Edwards had the braziers ready, lashings holding the four legs of each one against the ship’s roll, and they were half-full of old shavings and scraps of wood and chunks of pitch, a few screws of paper tucked in the bottom ready for lighting.

Ramage’s dozen men were arming themselves with a variety of weapons. Jackson had a cutlass in his hand and a butcher’s cleaver – presumably borrowed or stolen from the cook’s mate – swinging at his belt from a line through the hole in the wooden handle. Stafford had cut down the haft of a boarding pike so that he had in effect a three-sided dagger blade on a three-foot handle, and he was practising swinging a cutlass with his right hand and lunging the pike with the left. He’d arrived at the old main-gauche, Ramage realized, without ever having seen the shadier side of knightly combat. Maxton, the coloured seaman, had a cutlass in each hand and was slashing at an imaginary enemy with such fast inward swings that Southwick commented to Ramage, ‘He could cut a man into four slices before anyone saw him move.’

‘He was born with a machete in his hand,’ Ramage replied, remembering Maxton’s comment at Cartagena. ‘He learned to swing a blade cutting down sugar cane.’

Still the San Nicolas ploughed on. The nearer she came the less graceful she appeared: the cutwater could not soften the bulging bow, the bow wave was no longer a feather of white but a mass of water being shoved out of the way by the brute force of a ponderous hull. Her sails were no longer shapely curves but overstretched, overpatched and badly-setting. The beautiful lady in the distance was proving on closer inspection to be a raddled woman of the streets.

But there was no mistaking that raddled or not the San Nicolas had teeth: the muzzles of her guns were dozens of stubby black fingertips poking out of the ports. In a few minutes he’d be able to see details of the gilt work on her bow and figurehead. She was about a mile off.

Stafford was teasing Fuller again. ‘Wotcher want wiv that pike?’ he demanded. ‘Use a rod and a big fish ’ook, mate; yer won’t need bait. Just cast yer ’ook so it ’itches in their breeches!’

Fuller grunted an oath and continued chopping the pike haft to shorten it.

‘Fishes could teach you a thing or two.’

‘Ho yus! Reely brainy, fish. So brainy they bite your ’ooks. Takes brains, that do.’

‘There’s more brain in a cod’s head than your whole body, y’clacking picklock!’

‘Belay that,’ Southwick interrupted. ‘Keep it for the Dons.’

He then walked over to Ramage with his sword. ‘Perhaps you’d care to use this, sir. It’s served me well.’

It was enormous. Ramage could visualize a bearded Viking waving it with two hands as he leapt on shore from a longboat. But as he drew it from the scabbard he realized it was beautifully balanced.

‘I’d appreciate it, Mr Southwick,’ he said, ‘and I hope I’ll put it to good use.’

The Master beamed and slipped the shoulder belt over Ramage’s head.

As the San Nicolas came on, Ramage noted thankfully the rest of the leading group were instinctively closing in astern of her. And in behaving like driven cattle crowding together behind their leader to pass through a gate, they were increasing his chances of creating confusion.

‘A cast of the log if you please, Mr Southwick. Jackson, pass me my pistols. Quartermaster, what is you heading?’

Ramage wanted to know the Kathleen’s exact course and speed, and after looking at the Captain he glanced at his sketch. Southwick stood beside him, studied the pencil lines and shook his head.

‘The Commodore won’t make it.’

Ramage shrugged his shoulders again and pointed towards the British line. The Excellent had already quit the line and was following the Captain.

‘Perhaps not. But we don’t seem to be keeping a very sharp lookout, Mr Southwick. I trust we haven’t missed any signals?’

‘Bit difficult to know where to watch,’ Southwick said sourly. ‘So dam’ much going on!’

‘You merely have to watch; I’ve got to think and plan as well!’ flared Ramage.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘So am I,’ Ramage said hurriedly. ‘We’re all a bit jumpy. Well, I’d better say a few words to the ship’s company: time’s getting short. Muster ’em aft, Mr Southwick.’

As he stood balancing on a carronade waiting for the men to gather round him Ramage wondered how much his face had revealed in the past half an hour. Had it shown the slight doubt which had swelled into something approaching paralysing fear? Did it even now betray the tingling exhilaration which was beginning to grip him like drunkenness?

He was surrounded by a sea of eager, excited and unshaven faces: the men were stripped to the waist and most of them had rags tied round their heads to stop perspiration running into their eyes. They looked tough – almost wild – eager and confident. And they were silent. There was just the occasional creak of the tiller and the slopping of the sea under the counter as the cutter pitched slightly. A few gulls wheeled and mewed astern, as if trying to attract the cook’s mate’s attention and tell him it was time a bucket of rubbish was emptied over the side.

‘I told you earlier,’ he began, ‘that we’d only be spectators at the ringside. Well, I was wrong: we’re going to be one of the prize-fighters and–’

He paused, surprised at the men’s burst of cheering and, realizing the men liked the boxing metaphor, quickly rephrased what he was going to say.

‘–and I just want to make sure you know where we land our first punch. Well – you can see the Dons are trying to make a bolt round the end of our line. It looks as though Sir John can’t see for smoke. Anyway, you all saw the Commodore leave the line to head them off, and it’s touch and go whether he can get in among the leaders in time.

‘That’s where we come in. There they are – you can see ’em all bunched up, with the San Nicolas leading.’ He gestured over the bow and saw he had little time left.

‘Well, I’m certain that if we can do something to stop the San Nicolas or make her alter course suddenly, the rest of that lubberly bunch astern of her will get so confused they’ll run aboard each other. If we can cause enough confusion to delay ’em just ten or fifteen minutes that’ll be enough for the Commodore and Captain Collingwood.

‘So this is what we’re going to do. Most of you have served in a ship of the line. You know her weak spot – the jib-boom and bowsprit. Knock them off and nine times out of ten down comes the foremast.

‘We’ve got one punch and that’s where it’s got to land. You can see we’re heading for the San Nicolas. She can only fire her bow-chasers at us, and frankly they don’t scare me. At the last moment I shall turn to larboard – like a boxer stepping back to deliver a punch – and then suddenly turn to starboard, slap across her bows. If I time it right our mast should snap off her jib-boom and with a bit of luck her bowsprit should catch in our rigging.

‘What happens after that is anyone’s guess. My guess is that for a few moments before her stem hits us our whole weight will be hanging on her bowsprit, and she’ll start dragging us along. But the minute she does hit us, she’ll start to roll us over – and as we go we’ll be pulling even harder on the bowsprit. I’ll tell you later whether we sink before the bowsprit gives way!’

Again the men cheered. A glance forward showed he had at the most two minutes left to explain what he wanted.

‘Now whatever happens, one thing’s certain: as we hit the San Nicolas there’ll be a few moments before anything happens. During that time the dozen men I’ve chosen will try to get on board her and cut every sheet, halyard and brace they can reach. It won’t be easy but it shouldn’t be impossible because they won’t expect to be boarded. In fact they’ll be expecting to watch us drown.