quarterdeck here. Repeat your hail.'
Again the wind whipped the lookout's words away to leeward. Damnation, the lookout must have seen something, but in which direction?
Suddenly a man ran up the lee-side quarterdeck ladder. 'Larboard forward lookout, sir - you can't hear us. Ship or rock dead ahead, maybe three cables, and also breakers five points to larboard, mebbe four cables!'
'Very well, back to the fo'c'sle! Make sure Mr Southwick knows.'
Which was which? Was the rock ahead the northern one, Formica Maggiore, thirty-two feet high and whitish, with a bank of rocks extending southwards? Or the middle, eight cables to the south-east of it, blackish and with a bank extending northwest? Certainly it was not the southernmost because there was nothing southwards of it to cause breakers.
A thudding up the starboard side ladder made Ramage turn. 'Lookout, starboard bow, sir. Mr Southwick says the middle rock is dead ahead - it's not high enough to be the northern one; and the southern one's five points to larboard.'
'Very well, my compliments to Mr Southwick and tell him to stand by.'
Damn, damn, damn . . . they had found the ants, but which one to choose? He had hoped they would come up to the northern, the Formica Maggiore, but they were lucky to spot any of them.
So is it to be the middle one, now dead ahead, or the smaller one to larboard? Well, altering course five points to larboard will alert the frigate astern. More important, with the Calypso steering direct for the middle rock and the Frenchman precisely in her wake, the Calypso's bulk will almost certainly be obscuring the rock, and anyway the French will hardly expect. . .
And there it was, dead ahead, a black smudge on what passed for the horizon. With the ship rolling and pitching it seemed to be bobbing up each side of the masts, the rigging frequently obscuring it as though a net was swinging in front. Distance? Two cables, perhaps less.
Aitken now had his nightglass. 'Cable and a half distant, sir, judging from the seas breaking round it.'
Ramage turned to look at the French frigate and was startled to see how much she had caught up. He snatched Aitken's nightglass and inspected her. 'She's run her guns out!' he exclaimed. 'She's decided we're British and is getting ready to run up alongside and give us a few broadsides!'
'Aye, that'd be likely,' Aitken agreed. 'She probably thinks that going to windward she has a knot or two's advantage over us.'
'As long as everyone on her quarterdeck is concentrating on us! Hellfire, Aitken, quick, a cast of the lead!'
Ramage cursed his own inattention as Aitken shouted through the speaking trumpet, but almost instantly came back the cry: 'By the deep nine, sir!'
Ramage told himself that if he lived he would promote that leadsman who had been sensible enough to take a cast the moment he heard the lookout's hail from the foretopmasthead - the hail which the quarterdeck had missed.
By the deep nine: fifty-four feet. Close. And the rock dead ahead, closing fast. And astern the Frenchman closing fast. Every damned thing closing fast.
'By the mark five!'
Again the leadsman's hail: five fathoms, which was thirty feet: the Calypso had a bare fifteen feet under her forefoot. He strained his eyes. The rock seemed to be racing towards them now like an approaching ship. Much less than a cable; perhaps only a hundred yards ahead, with the Frenchman a hundred yards astern and beginning to alter course a point, to run up on the starboard side? Damn her!
In an emergency, which way would that French captain turn - to larboard, which meant going about, with the danger in these seas of getting caught in stays, or would he bear away to starboard, bringing the wind round to three or four points on the quarter? That was the sure and safe thing to do, and Ramage guessed he would do it - when the time came!
And there was the rock. The Calypso was almost on top of it. No, make an allowance for darkness distorting distance.
'By the mark five!'
The leadsman was working fast; coiling up that much line between casts was hard work.
'Give me the speaking trumpet,' he told Aitken, 'but be ready: if we miss . . .'
Calling 'Stand by' to Jackson, he jammed the mouthpiece against his mouth, took one more look at the rock, and shook his head: he had left it too late: the Calypso would hit the rock (or pile up on a shoal circling it) while making seven or eight knots!
'Mr Southwick - foredeck there! Let go!'
Almost simultaneously he felt rather than heard a series of thuds - the axes cutting the anchor adrift at the cathead; then, a few moments later he smelled burning. The anchor cable was now racing through the hawse and round the bitts, the hemp scorching with the friction against the wood.
'Larboard!' he yelled at Jackson and while the helmsmen spun the wheel with desperate urgency, Aitken snatched the proffered speaking trumpet and gave a stream of sail orders and then waited. Ramage could only imagine the anchor cable running out. Come on! he implored Southwick under his breath: snub the bloody cable and get that anchor biting home before we hit the rock! No, he decided, there is not room for the Calypso to swing round, like a running dog suddenly brought up all standing by its leash . . .
He pictured the men at the bitts struggling to loop over bights of heavy, stiff cable to slow it up and finally stop it running out. No, it was hopeless, the Calypso was sailing too fast: trying to stop six hundred tons of frigate like that - either the cable would break under the strain or the men would never hold it on the bitts.
But - yes! Yes, the rock was sliding to starboard - an illusion caused by the Calypso beginning to turn to larboard. And the blasted French frigate? There she was, topsails and courses in straining curves, and now on the Calypso's starboard quarter. And not changing course.
Aitken was shouting, sails slatting, the yards were being braced round: then suddenly the Calypso's stern seemed to slew to larboard, as though skidding on ice.
'The cable held, sir!' Aitken shouted jubilantly. He pointed down on the maindeck. 'Sent the men at the sheets and braces sprawling. No ship ever tacked so fast! And look at the Frenchman!'
Within moments Ramage heard heavier thuds from forward and then, after a whiplash noise like a pistol shot in a valley, the Calypso leapt forward as Southwick's men chopped through the cable which had done its task of bringing round the Calypso's bow in - a minute? Perhaps two. 'North-east by east,' Ramage called to Jackson. That would put the wind on the starboard beam - and mean she was sailing back almost along her own wake.
Suddenly Aitken was banging him on the shoulder and screaming: 'Look! Look for the love of God look!'
Ramage stared into the darkness in the direction Aitken was pointing. There, almost astern, was the rock and, just north of it, a bulky black shape. Shape? No, it was almost shapeless! Ramage strained his eyes, then grabbed a proffered nightglass.
Yes, as he had guessed, the French frigate had turned to starboard after suddenly sighting the rock revealed by the Calypso's unexpected turn to larboard. She had swung to starboard to miss ramming the rock but, as Ramage had intended, had run on to the hidden shoal stretching north-westward for a couple of hundred yards. Two hundred yards of innocent-looking sea - but only a few feet below the surface and like a monstrous lower jaw was the layer of jagged rocks of a shoal waiting to rip the bottom out of an unwary ship.
Then an excited Southwick was standing beside him, pumping his hand and bellowing: 'It worked, by God! Snatched us round as though we were a bull with a ring in its nose. But,' he added, his voice admonishing, 'you ran it damned close, sir! By the time we had the cable snubbed and the ship began to swing, I could dam' near touch that rock with my hand. Did you hear the leadsman?'
'Don't tell me about it,' Ramage said firmly. 'We're still sailing and our pursuer isn't, and that's enough!'
The sudden impact, stopping the French ship as she was sailing at about nine knots, had sent all three masts by the board. And seldom, Ramage thought, had 'by the board' been such an accurate description: the masts snapped at deck level ('by the board') as cleanly as trampled bluebell stalks and collapsed forward. The foremast went over the bow, tumbling down on the bowsprit and jibboom; the mainmast crashed down on to the stump of the foremast, and the mizen had followed. Spread over the wreckage, like a great fishing net tossed aside carelessly, the standing and running rigging softened the harsh line of broken masts and slewed yards. And beneath all that wreckage men must be trapped. Many would be dead. He turned away to face Sir Henry.
'You're a lucky gambler!' Sir Henry said, still almost shapeless in borrowed oilskins, and shook him by the hand. 'How you judged when to let go the anchor so that it bit in time for us to swing and miss the rock, I don't know -'
'Better not ask, sir,' Ramage said.
'Well, you did it, and in my letter to the Board I shall say it was fine judgement. And you, Mr Southwick. You must have been running about on the fo'c'sle, but you didn't even lose your hat!'
'It's well anchored down, sir,' Southwick said, tugging locks of his flowing white hair.
'What now, Mr Ramage?' Sir Henry asked, and Ramage recognized the tone. That was the trouble with being lucky: everyone then started expecting miracles . ..
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Time and time again the Calypso pitched and snubbed sharply like an angry tethered bull as the cable groaned. Nevertheless, considering they had anchored the ship in the dark using only the lead to keep them from running up on to the shoal, and were determined to be within gunshot of the stranded Frenchmen at daylight, Ramage was quite content.
The Calypso was headed south-east, into the wind with the middle rock of the Formiche di Grosseto, for which they had been steering last night, now on the starboard bow, a jagged black tooth growing from a smother of spray. The French frigate was on the starboard beam, a cable distant.
'She's so much like us to look at... and all I can think is that's how we'd look if we'd run on to the bank!' Southwick said.
'I've been thinking that ever since I had a good look at dawn,' Aitken said.
Ramage laughed drily. 'I hope you've both learned a lesson: that's what happens if you have a poor navigator, or keep a poor lookout.'
'That wasn't what put him up there,' Southwick protested.
'No, and that's the third lesson: never assume the ship you're following knows where she is or is keeping a sharp lookout,' Ramage said, 'and if she's an enemy, assume she's going to play a trick.'
