the speaking-trumpet from Southwick and shouted orders to the guns' crews.
No ship in the Royal Navy ever had enough men to 'fight both sides'. Usually there were enough to load and fire all the guns on one side, with only one or two men for each gun on the other side. If both broadsides had to be fired, then one was fired first and several men from each gun ran across to the corresponding gun on the other side to fire that while the men left behind began to sponge and reload.
The Heliotrope was now on the starboard beam (no wonder that had seemed a long swim from the Earl of Dodsworth) and the Commerce to larboard. Ahead, only her transom visible and her two masts in line, the Lynx. Once again he raised the telescope. Her gunports were still closed and beyond her, on the beach, he could see the Calypsos and the two surveying parties running towards their boats. The artist Wilkins would have to be left behind if he wanted to sketch the action from the shore.
He eased the sling slightly: his arm was beginning to throb, but at last he was coming to life; the chill which had seemed reluctant to go since they dragged him from the sea on board the East Indiaman was now being replaced by a warm glow; the sky was deep blue again, the hills of Trinidade fresh green, the sand of the small beach almost white, and the sea in the bay a patchwork of dark blue, pale green and brownish-green, warning of the depths.
The dark, mangrove green of the Lynx's hull, the buff of her masts and white of her topmasts, the black of her rigging - they showed up in the telescope as though she was fifty yards away instead of five hundred.
He hated sitting down: usually at this point before battle he would be free to pace along the deck beside the quarterdeck rail, but now he had to be in an armchair like some ancient dribbling admiral, hard of hearing and even harder of comprehension, bald of pate and watery of eye. He laughed at the picture and noticed Wagstaffe glance round and grin. Paolo began laughing and Ramage glanced up at him questioningly.
'You look very commodo, sir.'
'I'm comfortable enough, although I'd sooner be walking, my lad, but at least I'm not missing anything!'
He gave Paolo the telescope to replace in the binnacle box drawer: there was no need for it now. Four hundred yards - and he could see five or six men looking over the Lynx's taffrail. 'Can you see any men on her fo'c'sle?'
'No, sir, but it's partly hidden from here by the masts.'
The chances were that they had not begun cutting their cable. No men were casting off the gaskets of her sails. Had they all panicked? Frozen with fear as they saw the frigate beating up to them, guns run out on both sides? He pictured Tomás and Hart and knew they were not men likely to panic. Then he glanced at his watch. He tried to guess how long had passed since those two or three privateersmen had pointed and raised the alarm. Two or three minutes, he saw; not enough time for Tomás and Hart to do anything - yet.
Three hundred yards and the privateer was dead ahead: they must be wondering which side the Calypso was going to grapple. The colours of the Lynx were bright now and he could distinguish a thin man from a fat one. Judging distance was the hardest job of all.
'Wagstaffe, warn your men to be ready as the target bears. Southwick -' he paused. Two hundred yards. His eyes followed an imaginary curve round to larboard which would be the Calypso's course as she tacked. It had to be done slowly to give the gunners a good chance, but not so slowly that she got into irons and drifted helplessly. One hundred yards. That popping was from the muskets of a few privateersmen at the taffrail. In the moment before he shouted the order to Southwick he realized that the privateersmen were still trying to guess which side to defend against the Calypso!
'- put her about, Mr Southwick, slowly now!'
The master bellowed a few words at the quartermaster, Jackson, who snapped at the men on each side of the wheel. Slowly, it seemed so slowly that for a few moments he thought he had left it too late, the Calypso began to turn. For a long time it looked as though her bowsprit and jibboom would ride up over the Lynx's stern as she rammed the schooner, then the speed of her turn increased as the rudder started to get grip on the water. Southwick held the foretopsail backed just as the frigate swung north, with the Lynx's stern appearing to move slowly along her starboard side.
Ramage heard a thud from forward and saw a puff of smoke beginning to drift down the Calypso's side. Then another as the second gun fired in the frigate's raking broadside. More popping - loud from the muskets of Renwick's Marines, soft from the privateersmen; then the thumping of the frigate's remaining guns formed a deep background to the descant of flapping sails, squealing ropes and Southwick's shouted orders as slowly the Calypso went about on the other tack, swinging past northeast and heading west-north-west before she picked up enough way for the rudder to act.
The wind was so light that the smoke of the Calypso's guns did not disperse and in a few moments the quarterdeck was covered in a thin, acrid fog which set Ramage coughing and clutching his wounded arm as the spasms shot pain through his whole body. In a moment Paolo was bent over him, holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth to filter out the smoke, but almost as suddenly as it appeared the smoke vanished and the sun was glaring down again on the quarterdeck.
Still coughing, Ramage twisted round in the chair. The Lynx was on the starboard quarter, dust hanging over her stern, and beginning to slide under the Calypso's taffrail as the frigate continued her turn.
It was working! 'Mr Wagstaffe - are your men ready at the larboard side guns?'
The second lieutenant waved, a confident gesture to reassure the captain.
Still the Calypso continued turning: having fired all her starboard guns into the Lynx while tacking northwards across her stern she was turning to pass southward across the Lynx's stern again and fire all her larboard guns, loaded with grapeshot, into the unprotected stern, yet another raking broadside which every ship feared.
'Mamma mia!'Paolo exclaimed. 'We've smashed half her transom with the first broadside!'
'Only half? All those 12-pounders loaded with grapeshot should have done more than that!'
Grapeshot: they sounded innocent enough to a landman, but even for a 12-pounder they were formidable. Nine small iron balls, each weighing a pound (and the size of a duck's egg) comprised a single round. Each of the Calypso's guns on the starboard side had blasted nine one-pound shot into the Lynx; one after another, like a funeral bell tolling, until eighteen rounds had been fired - a total of 162 grapeshot.
Now the frigate was almost round again, bracing the yards and trimming the sails as the eye of the wind passed across her stern. Now she was steering southeast on the larboard tack to cross the Lynx's stern again.
'They're opening her ports, sir! I can see a gun run out!'
'They have only half ports,' Ramage shouted above the thumping of the sails and squeaking of rope rendering through blocks. 'Only one gun?'
'She's rolling, sir. I can see a second gun on this side. But - well, both have been run in. Now they're running them out again!'
Ramage realized what was happening. 'The grapeshot have cut the breechings. The guns are running in and out as she rolls. But why the rolling? Has she cut her cable?'
Paolo snatched the telescope from the binnacle drawer and adjusted the focus. 'Yes, sir! She's drifting! Some men are cutting the gaskets on her mainsail!'
Southwick was standing beside the chair. 'I took us too close that time, sir,' he said apologetically. 'The gun captains complain we passed the Lynx too fast. They want us about fifty yards off.'
'You'll have to bear away: they've cut their cable and are drifting.'
Southwick peered ahead and gave a helm order to Jackson and at almost the same moment Ramage heard the groan of the tiller ropes rendering round the barrel of the wheel as the helmsmen pulled at the spokes.
'She's not drifting fast,' the master commented. 'Half a knot; perhaps a little more.'
The trouble was, every yard of drift to leeward took the privateer towards the cliffs which ran in a curve round to the headland to the southwest. That section of the bay had not been surveyed yet. The Calypso could very easily slam into a reef, or even a single rock, that the Lynx with her much shallower draught could pass over without noticing it.
'You'd better have a man ready with the lead,' Ramage said to Southwick, who sniffed.
'He's standing by, sir, but the muzzle blast from the guns could bowl him over.'
Ramage bit off a sarcastic retort: the Lynx was turning slightly to starboard as she drifted. In a few moments she would be in the sights of the first gun on the larboard side.
'Orsini! Tell Mr Wagstaffe to load the guns on the starboard side with roundshot. Use roundshot in all guns after the larboard guns have fired.'
Southwick looked round, having heard the instruction. 'Aye, sir, the grapeshot is just pecking at her!'
But the master was wrong. 'Don't judge it by what you see on the transom!' Just imagine all that grape sweeping through the ship from stern to bow. Cutting the beggars down in swathes!'
The second and third guns fired almost simultaneously, followed by the fourth, fifth and sixth. The longer range - fifty yards, perhaps a little more - gave the gun captains more time to adjust the elevation. The training would stay the same, about at right-angles to the Calypso's centreline, and each gun captain would tug on his trigger line, attached to the flintlock, as the Lynx slid from forward aft across his field of view.
Now the smoke was pouring aft and rising over the quarterdeck. He held his breath, then tried to breathe shallowly, but in a few moments he was gasping and then coughing and once again it felt as though his left arm would burst under the jabs of a sharp knife.
A heavy double thud almost beside him warned that the last two guns had fired and Southwick, yelling 'That's it; round we go again!', began shouting into the speaking-trumpet to wear the frigate. Ramage saw a pall of dust lying over the privateer, the surest sign that the shot were tearing into the wood and slowly ripping the ship apart.
Again sails slatted; the yards creaked and rope rattled the sheaves of the blocks as the Calypso seemed to spin and back almost in her original wake, only this time with her starboard guns slowly coming to bear. The first half dozen had fired when suddenly Ramage saw a huge ball of flame and felt, rather than heard, a roaring blast, and everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Southwick was sitting in the chair by his cot. Ramage's arm felt as though the point of a cutlass blade was still embedded in it. But his right leg - the lower part felt heavy. And painful - especially when he tried to move his foot.
