Ramage & the Renegades (13 page)

Southwick had a chart spread over the top of the binnacle box and held down by weights. The men at the wheel and the quartermaster were not concerned with the compass as Southwick tried to pick out where the channel lay in stretches of water that were greenish-brown and gave no indication of the depths.

Aitken, speaking-trumpet in hand, kept the men busy trimming the sails to every change of course; yards were braced, sheets hauled or slacked. A seaman standing in the chains heaved the lead and sang out the depths in a lugubrious monotone, but everyone knew the ship would be hard aground before anyone could react to shoaling.

“Not far to Sheerness now, sir,” Southwick said. He had long since taken off his hat, and the wind ruffling his white hair once again reminded Ramage of a mop. “That's Hoo Fort on our larboard beam, and Darnett Ness on our starboard bow.” He gestured to a tiny island marooned in a depressing stretch of sea and which, at low water, would be reduced to a knob amid a vast stretch of smelly mud.

“Once we round the Ness, we pass Bishop Ooze to starboard, and Half Acre Creek joins us. Beats me where they get the names from. Past the Ness we're in Kethole Reach. I wonder if it was once “Kettle”? Then we come into Saltpan Reach. Oh, just look at that …”

Southwick delivered one of his prodigious, disapproving sniffs, and Ramage, who was thinking of a woman with black hair in a carriage on the Paris road, gave a start and looked ahead. At least four Thames barges were coming up Kethole Reach. For the moment he could see only the big rectangular sails, a deep red ochre from the red lead and linseed oil with which they were painted.

“Don't give ‘em an inch, sir,” Southwick said. “I know they're beating and we're running, but they only draw about four feet laden. If there's dew on the grass a barge can float! They can sail in to the bank until they see the leeboard lifting as it touches bottom, and then tack with plenty to spare. Don't forget we're drawing sixteen and a half feet aft, sir.”

Aitken had walked over to stand beside Southwick, as though to lend his weight to the Master's comments.

“The trouble with you,” Ramage said, keeping an eye on the sails, “you're afraid they'll scratch your paintwork!”

“Scratch the paint!” Southwick snorted. “If they're laden with stone, they'd stove in planks, and I'm sick of that dockyard!”

Ramage noticed that the barges had tacked one after the other so they were now sailing diagonally across the river, their hulls hidden beyond the bend. They were on the starboard tack, steering south, each great sprit holding out the sail like a matador's sword extending his red cape.

“Sir, the channel's but forty yards wide here; you remember coming up to Chatham we had to club haul and even then touched.”

Ramage glanced at the chart and said mildly to the Master: “You really mustn't be a bully, Mr Southwick. Just because we're so big, we can't just force barges aground. They've got a living to make. A man and a boy and a dog handling a vessel eighty feet long—more, some of them.”

The barges were in line ahead now. At first glance this was not obvious, because the gap between each of them varied, but Ramage decided to continue for a few more minutes. Aitken was looking worried now but turned away to shout orders for sail trimming as Southwick gave a new direction to the quartermaster—and the wheel turned a few spokes.

“It's soft mud, anyway,” Ramage said dreamily. “We'd sit snug as a duck until the tide made again.”

“But sir!” Southwick was certain that worrying about the Marchesa had temporarily deranged the Captain. “The sides of the channel slope; if we ground we'll slide and probably roll over as the tide leaves us!”

“The Good Lord will provide,” Ramage said. “You forget we have a chaplain now.”

“Sir—those barges can sit on the mud: they're flat-bottomed and built to dry out …”

By now the first barge was bearing away a point, having been allowing for the ebb, and shooting up Half Acre Creek. Southwick, alarmed by his Captain and keeping a sharp eye on the river bank each side, with its unappetizing expanse of mud, had not looked ahead again.

The second barge shot into the Creek. Aitken spotted it and turned quickly, about to tell Ramage. He caught sight of Ramage's face and grinned, turning away to face forward again.

“I really can't be responsible, sir,” Southwick protested. “We ought to have an anchor ready. Those four barges are so close to each other we don't have a snowball in hell's chance of getting through without hitting one of them.”

The third barge went into Half Acre Creek and Ramage said: “The war is over, Mr Southwick. We can't bully these poor bargemen. I'd be court-martialled if we sank one!”

“Sir, sir,” Southwick said desperately, “you will be court-martialled if you damage this ship and delay the expedition—God bless my soul!”

Southwick had glanced up and found Kethole Reach clear of sails as the last barge went into the Creek. He turned to Ramage, a sheepish grin on his face. “Sorry, sir, you fooled me! Did you know they were going into Half Acre Creek?”

“No, but I thought they might,” Ramage admitted. “They can make a couple of tacks, then come out again after we've passed.”

Once past the entrance to Half Acre Creek the Medway widened as Sheerness came in sight to starboard and the flat expanse of the Isle of Grain stretched away to larboard, a rough green and brown carpet of marshes and saltings and mudflats that reached across to the banks of the Thames.

“Looks as though we could anchor for the night off Warden Point, after getting in the powder,” Southwick said. “We'll be close by the entrance of the Four Fathom Channel, ready for an early start tomorrow, and there'll be enough moon later on for the watchkeepers to see the cliffs between East End and the Point.”

Ramage nodded. “We must be one of the few ships ever to sail on the proper day after a refit.”

By dawn the
Calypso
was steering along the north Kent coast under all plain sail with a brisk westerly breeze and an almost calm sea. The Great Nore and the Thames narrowing on its way through Sea Reach and up to London were astern. Southwick ticked off the bays and the towns, and Ramage was reminded of his days as a young midshipman.

St Mildred's Bay and then Margate; Palm Bay and then Long Nose Spit, with Foreness Point making the northern end of Botany Bay and White Ness the southern. Ramage called Paolo to his side and pointed out the North Foreland, the north-eastern tip of Kent, unimpressive under a watery sun to a youth who could compare it with Tuscany or some of the West Indian islands.

The
Calypso
then turned south to steer through the Gulf Stream, leaving the Goodwin Sands to larboard. The yards were braced up, tacks and sheets hauled, and the frigate began to pitch slightly with the two men at the wheel watching the luffs of the sails as carefully as the quartermaster and Martin, who was officer of the deck.

Ramage occasionally pointed out places of interest as the frigate sailed the fourteen miles between the North and the South Foreland, which was the official name of the famous “White Cliffs of Dover.” Seas breaking well beyond the larboard beam showed the main banks of the Goodwin Sands while on the other side of the shore was Deal, nestling amid the shingle behind the Downs, which was the favourite anchorage for ships waiting for bad weather to ease before beginning the long beat down-Channel.

A cast of the log showed the
Calypso
making eight knots, and soon they were hardening in sheets as the frigate passed Dover and bore up for Dungeness, the wedge of flat land, a mixture of beach and marsh, forming the south-eastern corner of the country.

With Folkestone abeam to starboard, Ramage pointed to the long, low, grey shape on the horizon to larboard. “You can see the French coast,” he told Paolo. “There's Calais.”

Jackson was the quartermaster and standing only a few feet away. Ramage's mind went back to the time when he had received orders from the Admiralty to see how near the French were to launching an invasion, and the only way of finding out was to go to France. He had enlisted the help of smugglers and gone to France with Jackson, Stafford and Rossi. The smuggler who risked his life for them had, ironically, been a deserter who had once served with Ramage.

“I wonder if ‘Slushy' Dyson still smuggles out of Folkestone,” he said to Jackson.

“I was just thinking the same thing, sir; we must be crossing the wake of that boat of his. Probably a rich man by now, with a big estate!”

“Not ‘Slushy'—if you remember, he was born under an unlucky star.”

Jackson peered down at the compass on the weather side and then at the luffs of the topsails. “Not so unlucky really, sir. He should have been hanged for mutiny, but I seem to remember you gave him a couple of dozen lashes and transferred him to another ship!”

Ramage laughed at the memory. “Just as well I did; if he hadn't become a smuggler we might never have got back from France!”

By now Paolo, all ears, was begging to be told the story, but Ramage shook his head. “Too many ships for us to watch. Every fishing boat must be out, and you saw how many merchant ships were pouring out of the Thames. No more convoys now; the first ship at the market-place gets the highest prices!”

Paolo, telescope tucked under his arm, tanned and far from the nervous youngster Ramage had first taken to sea (as a grudging gesture to Gianna, he had to admit), said: “I've never seen so many ships scattered across the sea, sir. But this is the first occasion I've ever been to sea in peacetime!”

“You get just as cold and wet and tired,” Ramage said, “with many more chances of collisions.”

“And no chance of action,” Paolo said sadly. “No more actions, no more prizes …”

Ramage spoke quietly as he said: “For a while, anyway. Remember, we were trying to persuade your aunt to stay in England.”

With that Paolo cheered up. “Yes, sir; I suppose we should consider this a holiday. Is that one of the packet boats?” he asked, pointing to a schooner crossing ahead.

Ramage looked at it with his telescope. “Yes, the Dover-Calais packet. Started again after being stopped for eight years.”

The wind remained steady in strength and direction and Ramage tacked the
Calypso
as they approached within six miles of Fécamp, easily recognizable because it sat in a gap in the cliffs. The frigate could comfortably steer north by west, and by nightfall they tacked to south by west as the Owers, off Selsey Bill, came abeam. Ramage's only concession to peace was that the
Calypso
had four lookouts on deck at night, one on each bow and each quarter, instead of the six of wartime. With so many ships sailing up and down-Channel, the risk of collision was considerable, and the
Calypso,
with a newly coppered bottom, new sails and well trained ship's company, was probably one of the fastest. This meant she faced the added risk of overtaking some merchant ship lumbering along without lights and running into her stern. Which, Ramage thought gloomily, would mean carrying away the
Calypso
's jib-boom and bowsprit, and that in turn would send the foremast by the board …

Southwick, after filling in the new course and the time, put the slate back in the binnacle drawer and, as if guessing Ramage's mood, walked over and said: “It's like hopping across Whitehall with your eyes shut, isn't it, sir? I'd forgotten what peacetime was like. Still, war can be worse: I remember once in a ship of the line finding myself in the middle of a West India convoy one night. More than one hundred ships, we found out afterwards.”

To Ramage it had all the qualities of a nightmare: far more dangerous than battle. A ship of the line could cut a merchant ship in half; with the bowsprits of a couple of merchant ships caught in her shrouds she could lose her masts. “What did you do?”

“Ah, Sir Richard Strachan was the Captain.” Southwick laughed at the memory. “I was only a passenger but I happened to be on deck, and so was Sir Richard. A pitch-black night; we hadn't seen a ship for a week. Suddenly we hear shouts nearby and sails flapping. Then our lookouts start shouting; a ship on each bow and one on our larboard beam—all crossing from the starboard side. You know what a cusser Sir Richard is: well, he cusses, but in a trice he has the fore-topsail back and we heave-to on the larboard tack and start burning blue flares. That was quick thinking, I must say: we hadn't a hope of seeing and dodging all those merchant ships; but we were so big that once they saw us—we must have looked a splendid sight, all lit up with those flares—they could do the dodging. It must have taken an hour for them to pass us, and there was Sir Richard with the speaking-trumpet swearing at every one that came within hail.”

“He
can
swear,” Ramage commented.

“We could hardly stand for laughing, sir. ‘Here's another one, sir,' the First Lieutenant would say, and if she was going to pass ahead Sir Richard would run up on the fo'c's'le, jam the speaking-trumpet to his mouth and bellow at the Master something like ‘Call yourself a man of God, do you? You look more like Satan to me!'”

The wind veered slowly north-west during Saturday night and by dawn on Sunday the
Calypso
was making nine knots, steering south-west, and Ramage intended to make his departure from Ushant. It was more usual to keep to the north, so that the Lizard was likely to be the last sight of land for a ship's company. The danger of being far enough south to use Ushant was that a sudden gale usually made it a lee shore, but the weather was set fair.

Hammocks were lashed and stowed; the ship's company had eaten breakfast; Ramage had carried out the usual Sunday morning inspection of ship and men. The smell of paint was at last disappearing. Ordering the wind sails to be rigged had helped—the tall cylinders of canvas, the tops open and winged and used in the Tropics to funnel a breeze down the hatches, had forced a strong draught through the ship which had made men shiver, but it had cleared the air.