presumably because ... Well, he was not sure quite why.
''At your Peril', eh? That frightens you, I expect.'
'Yes, sir; after all ...'
'Well, you are in good company, my lad; every naval officer given command of anything has that in his orders. Commanders-in-chief, commodores, captains, lieutenants - even midshipmen in command of captured tartanes.'
'You mean, sir, your orders say the same?'
'The same and a lot more.'
At that moment Paolo understood why the commanding officer was always such a remote figure; why the attitude of the seamen, for instance, had been different where Martin was concerned on board the Passe Partout: they were more reserved, keeping a distance between them. Now, Paolo realized, he had - however temporarily - crossed the line separating carefree midshipmen skylarking on board without any papers or passing any examinations from officers who must not fail without 'answering to the contrary'.
He saw Ramage was watching him.
'Nothing has changed', Ramage said quietly. 'Always do what you think is right, be just, don't give an order you would not carry out yourself and you won't fail. And once you've made up your mind, do it. Hesitation and indecision loses battles - and reputations.'
'Like you did not hesitate when you jumped on board the Passe Partout', Paolo said eagerly.
Ramage winced at such a recent memory. 'That's not a very good example, but just do your best. And remember, your men have to do their best as well.'
He motioned Paolo to put the order in his pocket. 'Now, we should be arriving at our destination tomorrow afternoon if the wind holds. For various reasons I don't want the whole convoy arriving at the same time, so from sunset tonight don't chase up the laggards. Let them lag. Ideally, I'd like half a dozen ships to arrive in the first hour or so, three or four an hour later, and the last of them at dusk ...'
'Aye aye, sir.'
'And there's one more thing. You can keep Stafford and Rossi, but I need Jackson back. You can pick a good man to replace him. Now, listen carefully; this is what you will do when the convoy arrives.'
Paolo listened for four minutes, nodded, was reprimanded for not saying 'Aye aye, sir' to acknowledge the orders, and then left the cabin and climbed down to the waiting boat in a haze of excitement: he commanded a ship of war and had a document to prove it. Suddenly he found the prospect and responsibility did not frighten him. At least, not very much.
The Calypso's lookouts first sighted land lying low on the horizon to the east two hours before noon, but apart from there being cliffs along the coast no one, apart from Southwick, was sure that they were on course for their destination.
The advantage of the destination lying on a coast that ran northwest and southeast was that a noon sight gave the latitude, which ran almost at right-angles through the coastline. If the latitude from the sight was greater than the latitude of the destination, they had to turn south, if less then north.
With fifteen ships following the Calypso, Southwick knew that his navigation was important, but as the sun climbed higher towards its zenith in a cloudless sky the master only grinned when Ramage and Aitken teased him.
The effect of the Passe Partout lying out on one wing of the convoy and not swooping down to make a laggard set more sail to catch up was very apparent. The Sarazine was still the closest to the Calypso, but she was now a good two miles astern, with the Spanish Golondrina abeam. After those two ships, the other thirteen were spread out to the westward so that four of them had almost dropped below the horizon, all but their topgallants hidden below the curvature of the earth.
The Passe Partout, recognizable because of her lateen sail and in the far distance looking even more like a shark's fin, now seemed as much of a straggler as any other merchant ship in the convoy, although Ramage guessed that Orsini was keeping his men busy with the hundred and one jobs that needed doing - checking over, cutting into proper lengths and drying slowmatch, cutting more wads for the swivels; filling more cartridges - and Ramage knew that meant sewing more flannel cartridges, because one of the items Orsini had taken with him was flannel. Orsini, Rossi, and Stafford would carefully check for wear on the vangs holding the big lateen yard and the sheets and the downhauls at the lower end of the yard. The sail had been lowered for an hour yesterday, so all the holes from the Magpie's musket balls would have been repaired.
Baxter and Johnson, Ramage was prepared to bet, were scrubbing out the after cabin, the master's, which Orsini was proposing to use as his own as he had to be close to the man at the tiller in case of an emergency. The fo'c'sle, too, was suffering from several months of too many seamen being careless with scraps of food. Orsini would be hoping for a captain's inspection of the Passe Partout when they arrived but, Ramage thought ironically, he had never yet tried to give one of those big lateen sails a harbour furl - and it was unlikely the French would have any of the neat canvas gaskets, in effect straps, to which Orsini was accustomed; more likely one of the vangs would be wound round and round the yard in a spiral to furl the sail in a long bundle.
It would be interesting to see if Martin's Medway and Thames background had rubbed off on Orsini. Among the Thames barges, whose long sprits were Britain's nearest to the lateen yards of tartanes or xebecs, the vangs - the heavy ropes which controlled the upper end of the sprits and stopped them slamming about in heavy weather - were almost invariably referred to by bargemen as 'wangs', just as seamen pronounced 'tackle' as 'taickle'. Martin would almost certainly have called them 'wangs' and it would be interesting to see if Orsini had assumed that was the proper English pronunciation. Palan de retenue in French, oste della mezzana in Italian, burdas de mezana in Spanish. They made 'vang' seem a very bald and ugly word; still, in a gale of wind, he would sooner shout 'vang' through a speaking trumpet.
Ramage glanced at his watch and looked round for Southwick. The master was waiting with his quadrant in his hand. There was no need for a midshipman standing by with a watch or minute glass; the sun would 'hang' for many seconds as it reached the highest point in its meridian passage and Southwick adjusted his quadrant to measure the altitude. They were in roughly the same latitude as Ibiza and between Valencia and Alicante, he thought inconsequentially; thirty degrees north of the area in which he preferred to serve, the Caribbean.
The Tricolour streamed out in the wind: at least the breeze had stayed steady since dawn after easing down for the night. Easing down just enough, Ramage admitted, to let the convoy straggle to its heart's content. Now Southwick was, for once, becoming impatient waiting for local noon, for the moment when the sun reached its zenith and its bearing was due south.
Southwick walked over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck and held the telescope of the quadrant to his eye, making sure that no shrouds, rigging, lanyards or blocks obscured his view. He flipped down a shade, looked at the sun through it, and flipped down a second. Then he set the arm against a figure on the ivory scale.
Ramage winked as Southwick glanced across to see if this act of supreme confidence had been noticed. Southwick was in fact doing it backwards: he was in effect saying he knew already the precise latitude in which the Calypso and the convoy were sailing, and in that latitude at noon on this day in the year the altitude of the sun should be a certain number of degrees and minutes measured by his quadrant. By putting the altitude on the quadrant he should (if he was correct) put the telescope of the quadrant to his eye and, as the sun hovered at the zenith in the course of its meridian passage at noon, he should see it reflected in the mirror and apparently sitting on the horizon like a bright red plate balanced vertically on a shelf.
Ramage watched to see if the master's left hand reached up to make a slight (and probably surreptitious) adjustment - an indication that the Calypso was north or south of Southwick's reckoning. He counted three minutes and saw Southwick smile to himself as he lowered the quadrant and walked to the slate which was on top of the binnacle box.
'San Pietro and Sant' Antioco islands are dead ahead on this course, distant about ten miles, sir', Southwick reported. 'Thirty-nine degrees and two minutes of latitude.'
'Very well, Mr Southwick.' He looked round for Kenton who was the officer of the deck. 'I'll trouble you, Mr Kenton, to let fall the t'gallants, and once they're drawing we'll have a cast of the log. Keep an eye on the convoy and pass the word for Mr Aitken and Mr Rennick to come to my cabin.' He gestured to Southwick to follow and went down the companion way.
He had a large-scale chart open on his desk, and Southwick was placing the stone paperweights, by the time the sentry's call announced the arrival of Aitken and Rennick.
Aitken immediately looked at the chart as if hoping to see pencilled lines that would reveal the captain's plans. Instead he saw a fifty-mile stretch of coast running northwest and southeast down to form Capo Teulada and Capo Spartivento at the southwestern corner of the island of Sardinia.
Forming, Aitken realized, one of the great corners of the Mediterranean. Once a ship sailed into the Mediterranean past Europa Point and left Gibraltar astern, Capo Teulada and then Capo Spartivento, forming the southern tip of Sardinia, and Capo Passero at the south end of Sicily, had to be rounded before turning up into the Adriatic or the Aegean, or passing on south of Crete - he could not remember the name of that cape - for those places with magical names: Sidon, Tyre, Acre and the Biblical villages and towns, none of which seemed to be on the coast, as though the early Christians were wary of the sea, despite St Peter being a fisherman.
The four men stood round the desk looking at the chart, and Ramage put his finger down at a point about halfway along the coast.
'There's the Golfo di Palmas', he said to Aitken and Rennick, 'and Southwick assures me it lies just ahead. That island protecting it to the north is Sant' Antioco and the smaller one north of that is San Pietro. The Golfo di Palmas is reckoned one of the best anchorages in this part of the Mediterranean: ships can find shelter because even a south wind doesn't kick up too much of a sea.'
'And for our purposes not too many villages or towers overlooking the anchorage', Southwick said.
'None that need bother us', Ramage agreed. 'I haven't been in here for ten years or more, but last time there were a few fishermen living in huts, a tower or two and churches, and a Roman acropolis. They fish for tunny. Anyway, they need not concern us. Now, with our topgallants drawing we should be pulling ahead of the convoy, and because each master knows we are making for the Golfo di Palmas, that'll seem natural enough: they can see land ahead and those who could be bothered to take the sun's meridian passage will know that it is the right spot.'
'I wonder where they think the convoy is going to after that', Rennick said in an elaborately casual voice, obviously hoping to draw a hint from Ramage.
'Once they've rounded Capo Spartivento the whole of the eastern Mediterranean is open to them', Ramage said blandly. 'Venice, Ragusa, the Morea, Constantinople, Egypt...'
Rennick grinned and said: 'Which would you choose, sir?'
'For a visit in time of peace? Venice, Constantinople ... scores of places.'
'That wasn't quite what I meant, sir.'
'I know', Ramage said, 'but I'm making you add patience to your long list of virtues.'
He picked up Orsini's list of ships and the sheet of paper on which he had made an estimate of the number of their crews.
