By direction of the captain, he is to allow a proper quantity of powder and shot for exercise, viz. once a week for the first two months, and once a month afterwards, six charges of powder to each man for exercise of small arms, and once a fortnight four pounds of musket shot for them all, and once a month five charges of powder and five of shot for the exercise of the upperdeck guns.
Faced with the Admiralty instructions, the wretched fellow had, within a fortnight, then claimed that 'each man' did not include idlers, such as the cook and his mate, the captain's clerk, sailmaker and others whose name came from the fact that they did not stand a watch.
Once again Ramage had taken him down to his cabin and pointed out there was nothing in anyone's instructions that said the cook had to cook food for him, that the purser had to provide him with water, or the clerk with quills, ink orpaper. In the meantime there were precisely forty individual instructions covering the gunner's duty, and it was up to the captain to make sure, with suitable strictness, that they were obeyed. Number twenty, for example, which in its entirety said of the gunner: 'He is to observe upon the guns, the notches or sights on the base, or muzzle rings, for the better guiding the aim.'
Ramage had asked the gunner what he thought that meant and, getting an evasive answer, had asked Aitken to give his opinion as the ship's first lieutenant. The Scotsman, who detested the gunner, said flatly: 'It means he is to stand and observe the notches. 'Observe' means 'to keep a watch on', the dictionary tells us that, so obviously the gunner must stand and watch the notches on all the guns every day during the hours of daylight.'
By now the gunner was becoming very nervous, his fear of authority overcoming his meanness with the Board of Ordnance's powder and shot, and before dismissing him Ramage said: 'You will report to the first lieutenant every Monday, in the forenoon, with a copy of your Instructions, and he will check with you that you have done your duty the preceding week. In the meantime every man in this ship, watchkeeper, idler or waister, must be proficient with a musket. That is one of your responsibilities.'
Ramage cursed to himself for wasting his time now thinking black thoughts about the gunner, and concentrated on Southwick's chart. The Calypso still had her six boats, a dozen Marines under a corporal, and plenty of seamen. All she lacked, Ramage thought crossly, were commission and petty officers.
Eight merchant ships left, and about a hundred men in them who had to be captured and dumped on shore to follow their fellow countrymen along the dusty road to Cagliari. Should he wait for nightfall, in case one of the ships became suspicious? He almost laughed aloud at the idea: the Calypso could sail through the anchorage sinking a ship with each broadside; likewise any two of her boats with boarding parties could seize a ship. The whole need for secrecy was now gone because, as he looked westward, the Sarazine was leading her convoy out to sea: six fine and undamaged prizes taken without the expenditure of a single musket shot or a human life - unless one counted the Algerines.
No, two boats could go to each ship and remove the crew. If they went to a ship at one side of the anchorage first, and after the French seamen were landed went to a vessel at the opposite side of the gulf, the chances were that no one would notice anything and the task could be accomplished quickly.
Ramage wrote a number against each of the ships on Southwick's chart.
'Jackson, six Marines and six seamen as boarders and eight men to row the gig; Stafford, the corporal and the other six Marines, six seamen and eight to row the launch...'
He thought a moment, and then added: 'We'll have eighty men standing by, armed: they can go off in the cutters, pinnace and jolly boat, if there's an emergency.'
'Don't forget our men in the Passe Partout, sir.'
'No, we're keeping her as our tender. She's one of the few in the convoy that could keep up with us going to windward!'
'Pity we couldn't have kept young Orsini in command of her.'
'I thought about that, but he'll learn a great deal more by going to Gibraltar.'
Southwick stumped from one side of the quarterdeck to the other, after putting his telescope on the chart to hold it down, and then said bitterly: 'It's enough to make a saintly man swear.'
He was talking to himself but a curious Ramage asked: 'Has your rheumatism started again?'
'No, sir, it's just painful to look at eight prizes without being able to do anything about them.'
'Well, our lads will only be losing the value of the hulls; most of them are laden with powder and shot. If they weren't bound for so many different ports, I'd think the French are planning a new campaign somewhere, but they're obviously just re-equipping garrisons.'
'Aye, but it's a pity the Admiralty pay so poorly for French powder.'
'Be fair! It's such poor quality you remember we changed it when we captured the Calypso.'
'Oh, I know all that, sir', Southwick said. 'And it's not the money either - thanks to you most of us have plenty of prize money in the Funds now. It just seems a waste of ships.'
'You would have sunk them all if you'd found the convoy at sea', Ramage pointed out, 'and been very pleased with yourself.'
'I suppose so, but we didn't find them at sea', Southwick said morosely, 'we sent for them, using the Frogs' own semaphore!'
By nightfall Ramage was bored. Perhaps bored was the wrong word, because he was rarely bored. Unsettled would be more accurate, the jumpy feeling which always came when he had to stay on board while some of his men went off to meet the enemy. This time it really was 'meeting', almost a social occasion, because with the Frenchmen from seven of the ships already taken on shore, there had been no shooting.
The moon would be rising in the next ten minutes; already the sky to the eastward had a golden tinge. Ah, there were the boats leaving the fifth ship and heading for the shore.
'We've been lucky with the weather', Southwick said as the two men stood at the quarterdeck rail. 'With anything of a wind or sea, it'd take all night to get those men ashore. I wonder if the first of them have reached Cagliari yet.'
'Not unless they ran all the way: it must be sixty miles or more, whether they go south round the coast or north to Iglésias and then across to Cagliari. They'll keep to the tracks; I can't see any of them climbing rows and rows of hills.'
The boats were leaving the beach and at this distance, now the moon was over the hills and lighting the gulf, they looked like water beetles as they headed for the sixth ship, anchored close to Sant' Antioco. Ramage glanced over towards her and as he did so his eye caught sight of a dark patch to seaward.
Was it Isolotto la Vacca, the little rock just south of Sant' Antioco? No, he could see that, and this patch was small and much farther out to sea. A ship - perhaps one of Aitken's convoy returning?
'There's something out there, just south of Vacca', Ramage said to Southwick as he hurried aft to the binnacle box drawer to get the nightglass. He was back in a moment and resting his elbows on the capping of the rail to steady the glass.
'It's a ship...'
'What's her course, sir?'
'I think she's heading for the gulf... Blast this glass; it's hard to work out everything upside down ... Yes, she's on the starboard tack, the moon is lighting up her sails well. Not much wind out there... Yes, I have the line of her masts now ... she's probably heading for Cala Piombo. That's about twelve miles from here at the south end of the gulf, isn't it?'
'Yes', Southwick said. 'An easy anchorage to make for on a moonlit night 'cos you can pick up that tower.'
Ramage concentrated for another minute or two, knowing it was very easy to make mistakes with the nightglass because, apart from showing ships upside- down, it also made them appear to be on the opposite tack.
'Our lads will have a long row down there with boats', Southwick said. 'Still, if she sights us all anchored this end of the gulf, perhaps she'll change her mind and join us.'
'That might be a mixed blessing', Ramage said grimly. 'She's a French ship of the line.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
While Southwick sent away the two cutters and pinnace to take off the French from the three remaining merchant ships and the jolly boat rowed over to recall the gig and launch when they left the beach, the bosun's mates hurried through the Calypso sending the men to quarters.
Quickly and quietly they wetted and sanded the decks, put match tubs between the guns, half filling them with water, and set out larger tubs in which the sponges could be soaked when sponging out the guns. The gunner took the large, bronze magazine key from Ramage and went below to begin issuing flintlocks, lanyards, prickers and powder horns to each of the gun captains and be ready to issue cartridges to the powder boys.
Southwick was looking at his watch and cursing.
'We're lucky the dam' French 74 isn't steering for us; I've never known the men to take so long!'
'You must be patient', Ramage murmured, knowing his own reputation as the most impatient man in the ship. 'Don't forget we hardly have a gun captain left on board: nearly all the men are doing someone else's job, and they're not used to it.'
'Aye', Southwick admitted, 'but they've been exercised enough at exchanging jobs.'
'It's not the same. Telling every fourth man he's a casualty and making the rest move round is no good because each replacement sees what the previous man was doing.'
'I hadn't thought of that', Southwick said, and Ramage admitted the thought had only just come to him. In future - if there was a future, with a ship of the line coming into the gulf like the door of a trap closing - he would start all exercise at the great guns by jumbling the men's numbers. Or perhaps just subtracting three, so everyone had to change.
He swung the glass back to the French ship. She was still well outside the gulf and clewing up her main and forecourse, so she would enter the gulf in a leisurely fashion under topsails alone. In this light breeze! If her bottom had the usual crop of barnacles and she was in fact making for Cala Piombo, or even the one to the north of it, she had at least fifteen miles to sail, and she must be making only three or four knots.
All that made sense. If the French captain had never been into the gulf before, he was coming in under the worst possible conditions (barring a gale, of course): running in at night before a west wind meant he was coming up to a lee shore and sailing straight towards a full moon still low on the horizon, so that all the hills and cliffs were shadowy, making it very difficult to judge distances. The land at six miles would look as though it was only three miles away.
