'What do you suggest, then?' Ramage asked coldly. 'Shall we hurry back to London and ask Their Lordships if we should include these others? Or would you prefer that I go ahead and risk their lives?'
'There's no need to go to London, sir. You've several of the husbands on board, including Sir Henry. Why not ask them what they think?'
'Call a council of war, eh?' Ramage asked sarcastically.
'No, sir,' Aitken answered calmly, knowing how his captain despised councils of war. 'But husbands understand their wives,' he continued. 'Sir Henry knows what his wife would want us to do. Maybe just as important, Sir Henry knows what he would prefer. You can ask them individually: visit each one in his cabin. There's no question of a council of war and no question of evading responsibility. I'm a bachelor, I admit; but if I was a married man in this position, safe on board a frigate with my wife up in yon fortress, I know I'd like to have a say in what's to be done. After you know what the husbands have said, you can make your decision. The responsibility will be yours, and yours alone.'
The more Ramage thought about it, the more reasonable Aitken's argument became. 'Very well, I'll do that, and thanks for speaking up: I'm grateful - though I'm rather puzzled why you hesitated.'
Both men sat alone with their thoughts for two or three minutes, until Ramage said quietly: 'But even if all the husbands are in favour of us trying a rescue, how the devil can we tackle Forte della Stella? It's designed to hold off an army . . .'
'We're just reaching the place where we need the rope ladder,' Orsini said. 'You can see that sharp rock up there, sir: just made to secure it.'
'Wait a moment,' Ramage gasped, 'let me get my breath back: I'm neither a topman nor a goat, and this climbing in the dark is hard work.'
Below and slightly to the north of them, the rocky islet of Isolotto sat in the sea as though rolled down from the top of Monte Argentario and bounced out far enough from the coast to leave a wide channel. It was steep-sided with deep water round it, and the Calypso, anchored to leeward seemed - well, Ramage could only think she must look as though she belonged there.
Port' Ercole, over on her starboard quarter, was too small to provide a good anchorage for a frigate unless towed in with boats and it was too shallow alongside the jetty. So what was more obvious than a French national ship anchoring in the lee of Isolotto, only a brisk row or a short sail for one of her boats should the captain need to visit the port?
'Blast these mosquitoes,' Ramage muttered, 'they seem to be hiding in every bush I grab for a handhold.'
'At least we frightened the goats off,' Paolo said, recalling how he had sat in the captain's cabin while he and Rossi reported, and although his wrists, ankles, neck and face seemed one itching mass, he had managed not to scratch himself.
Orsini led the way upwards just as Stafford arrived on the small ledge with a party of cursing seamen, two of whom manhandled the rolled-up rope ladder while others with the coil of knotted rope were hitching it round rocks and bushes to provide handholds.
The moon was rising quickly now with the thinning cloud breaking up into patches to reveal many of the stars and planets. More important, Ramage realized, the moon was throwing enough shadow to show the seamen and Marines now coming up the cliff face where to put their feet. On a night like this, with a land breeze blowing from the edge of the cliffs across to the fort, a musket dropped a few feet on to a rock might well make a clatter loud enough to reach the ears of the French sentry on the battlements.
Those wooden buckets: he wished now he had risked using the leather ones because a wooden bucket if accidentally dropped (or grasped tightly by a man as he slipped and fell) would make almost as much noise as a dropped musket.
And the devil take climbing a cliff face with a brace of pistols jammed into the top of your breeches and a sword wrapped in canvas slung down your back, even if some marline prevented it swinging against the rocks. Nor did burnt cork smeared on the face and hands to blacken them add to the general feeling of comfort.
Ramage stopped feeling sorry for himself as he concentrated on the vertical climb that Orsini had earlier dismissed as 'fairly easy' and then pictured Southwick at the end of the tail of seamen and Marines, jollying along the men and making sure they moved silently.
As he reached the top of the vertical cliff face and found Jackson only just behind him, Ramage sat down on a rock and watched the American unwind a light line coiled round his chest and shoulders, and drop one end over the edge. There was a call from below and then, two minutes later, another, and Jackson started hauling on the line. It was obviously heavier than he had expected and both Ramage and Orsini helped him. Finally the top step of the rope ladder appeared; then the second and third.
'Charge them a shilling a time,' Ramage said as he left Jackson securing the heavier ropes of the ladder round the rock Orsini had pointed out. Ramage wiped the perspiration from his brow before it ran into his eyes. It was a damnably hot night, apart from all this climbing, and there was little enough breeze.
But was it dying? The thought suddenly alarmed him more than anything in the last forty-eight hours. He muttered to Orsini and both wetted a finger and held it up.
The breeze was steady, which was a good sign because a fitful breeze, coming in puffs, was usually a warning that it would die within half an hour. If only it was blowing at double the strength! Yet perhaps a gentle breeze would serve his purpose better: doubling the strength might halve the time available.
'Seems steady enough, sir,' Orsini agreed, and led on when Ramage grunted. Orsini now knew how much depended on that breeze. Originally Captain Ramage had simply asked him whether he thought it possible to attack the fort, and he had answered that he thought it was. That was all, really: there was no mention of the size of the attacking force.
Orsini admitted to himself that the thought of attacking Forte della Stella (even using every man on board the Calypso) was frightening: only two hundred men to storm a fortress built to withstand an army. Then later he had discovered that Mr Ramage was going to use only two parties of men, ten in one, twenty in the other.
For a time (and Orsini freely admitted it) he was in such a panic that he debated whether or not to go to Mr Ramage and confess he had been stupidly over- optimistic in his report. Then, Mamma mia, he had heard Mr Ramage's plan and was thankful he had done nothing. Audacious! That was a splendid English word, so near the Latin and Italian, but just different enough to convey that extra something that Mr Ramage so often provided from out of nowhere, it seemed.
Every piece of audacity was so well tailored, whether attacking Port' Ercole with the bomb ketches a couple of years ago (more, actually), or dealing with the pirates at Trinidada (where Mr Ramage had met his future wife), or escaping from France when war broke out again and while he was on his honeymoon. Orsini stopped his memory working: Lady Sarah had vanished while Mr Ramage was crossing the Atlantic to Devil's Island. Yet Lady Sarah was, Orsini knew, just the sort of woman he would himself like to have as a wife. Now she was missing, probably drowned.
'So at last we reach the top, eh?' Ramage commented. 'Thank goodness it will be downhill going back!'
'Do you think the ladies will be able to climb down?'
'You're looking a long way ahead,' Ramage said banteringly, 'but if we manage to get 'em this far, I think they'll get down all right.'
Ramage looked across at the fort. As its name indicated, it was star-shaped and with the moon lighting some parts and casting deep shadow over the rest he was reminded of a starfish tossed up on a sandy beach: apparently it had no eyes, no mouth, and no way of moving yet, put back in the sea, it walked, ate, and seemed to know where it was going. Momentarily, Ramage had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps hidden eyes were watching from the fort; that there was more life there than he gave credit.
He sat down amid the coarse grass on the cliff top and waited for the men to get up the rockface. His watch showed it was just an hour past midnight. Plenty of time before dawn. In fact, a chilling thought, some of his own men and those of the French garrison might be living the rest of their lives between now and dawn. Not the hostages, though, he told himself. He remembered the arguments he had had with the husbands.
Sir Henry was hard put not to overrule Ramage and insist on coming, and so were the two other admirals, until Ramage had been forced to tell them brutally that they were out of condition, would be hopeless shooting with muskets and probably with pistols as well, were completely untrained for this kind of fighting (in which the Calypsos excelled) and - this had been the final argument - for every one of the admirals he took he would have to leave a trained Calypso behind.
The repulsive Cargill, not consulted since he was a bachelor, had started off by insisting that he should be in command, proclaiming that this was an attack for which soldiers were trained, and so on. Again Ramage had been brutal. No, he corrected himself, his contempt for Cargill had made him almost vicious, and when Cargill had tried to assert his authority in front of all the other hostages, Ramage had asked him where he had seen active service. When the general evaded the question, Ramage had dismissed the whole question with a curt: 'It is no secret, sir, that you had neither seen a shot fired in anger nor heard one until the Calypso fired at that French frigate.'
Yes, it was nasty, it was probably unfair, and it was many other things, but it was necessary and, Sir Henry had said to him privately afterwards, Cargill had asked for it. Had he kept his mouth shut, everything would have gone off smoothly, but once again Cargill had wanted to play soldiers, and this time the result could be not only disastrous for the Calypsos, but lethal for the hostages up in the fort.
Aitken scrambled over the edge of the cliff and joined his captain. Ramage was secretly pleased to note that the first lieutenant was also panting.
'That rope ladder was a good idea of Orsini's sir,' he gasped. 'It'd be a devil of a climb without it.' He paused. 'But you came up without it, sir.'
'Yes,' Ramage said, adding teasingly, 'a question of seniority.'
'Aye, there's many advantages in being a poor lieutenant if that cliff face is the price o' being on the Post List!'
Several seamen followed and squatted down in the grass behind the officers. Then Hill came up, leading several men who very carefully lifted wooden buckets over the edge and equally carefully set them down again. Rennick was next, followed by Sergeant Ferris and five Marines. Rennick had wanted to bring all the Marines, but Ramage had pointed out that Kenton, left in command of the ship, needed a force in case the French arrived from Port' Ercole.
Finally Southwick, puffing and blowing but very cheerful, arrived and announced: 'There! If I can haul myself up this cliff, then a convoy of rheumaticky grandmothers can let themselves down! The boats have returned to the ship, sir,' he reported to Ramage.
'Very well. Now, Mr Aitken, fall in the two parties and then we can move on and finish tonight's business.'
Ramage again tested the breeze while Aitken sorted out the seamen, and then he inspected the buckets. They were doing their job and the men responsible for them knew what they were expected to do. Ramage walked with Hill until they were out of earshot of the men.
'Hill, I don't want to make you nervous, but I must make sure you realize the success of the whole attack depends on your positioning. Almost more important, you and your men mustn't be seen by the sentry - or the people roused out when he raises the alarm. Until you hear shots - if youhear shots - you keep out of sight. If there's shooting and if you've finished your job, then you can join in.'
'Yes, sir, I understand. Seems a long way from the great cabin of the Salvador del Mundo!'
'If it all goes wrong, we may yet find ourselves back there!' Ramage said grimly and recalled the strange court-martial, where a captain's insanity had put his life in danger and Hill, a bored young lieutenant on the port admiral's staff, had asked Ramage to be allowed to sail with him.
Aitken joined them. 'The two parties are ready, sir.' Then he asked Hill: 'You're sure you have enough men? Ten, and five buckets?'
