'By the way, Southwick, Lord Nelson was inquiring after you. You'll be flattered to hear that he remembered your name from the time he put me in command of the Kathleen, and seems to have noticed every time your name was mentioned in a Gazette letter.'
The old master grinned with pleasure and then said, as a hint to Ramage to give some more news: 'You mentioned in your letter yesterday His Lordship's plans.'
'Yes, we called on him and Lady Hamilton, but I'm here now because of a message I received yesterday morning - after the Dover 'chaise had left, otherwise I'd have been here earlier.'
He then told both men of the talk he had had with Nelson, followed by Captain Blackwood's unexpected visit the previous morning with the news of the Combined Fleet's concentration at Cadiz.
Southwick rubbed his hands together with the glee of a trencherman watching tender roast beef being carved. 'St Helens, eh, and if the Victory's gone, we race her to Cadiz. Give us a bit o' luck with the winds in the Bay of Biscay, and we could beat her!'
'At least we have a clean bottom and a decent suit of sails,' Aitken said.
'What about the ship's company?' Ramage asked suddenly, remembering he had caused several heads to shake in the dockyard when he gave permission for each watch to have ten days' leave, starting with the larboard watch.
The dockyard commissioner had wanted to countermand Ramage's order, declaring that a good half of the men would desert. 'You're just turning 'em loose,' he had said, 'then you'll come whining to me that you haven't enough men to shift the ship out of the dock, let alone get under way.' But Ramage had been adamant. It was a test of his own leadership: all the men had done very well from prize money (several of the senior petty officers were by their standards rich) and they served in a ship which was happy, frequently in action, and where sickness (thanks to the Surgeon Bowen and a sensible diet) was almost unknown. Ramage's feeling was that if any men took advantage of his trust to desert, he did not want those sort of men anyway.
'The ship's company, sir?' Aitken repeated, as though puzzled by the question. 'Well, we are still a dozen or so short of complement, as before, but everyone's back from leave.'
'All of them?'
'All,' Aitken said. 'In fact half a dozen came back early - spent all the money they'd drawn.'
So much for the dockyard commissioner, Ramage thought. How did one let him know without offending a man who wielded great power within his dockyard walls?
'What's the earliest they can flood up?' Ramage asked.
'The master attendant reckons he can start in a couple of hours. But we'll have to wait for high water to get out over the sill of this dock, which is the smallest in the yard and used only for frigates, as you know, and by the time they've knocked away all the shores and fished them out so they don't tear the sheathing, we'll have an hour of ebb running ...'
'Well, I'm not going down the dam' Medway on an ebb tide,' Ramage said firmly. 'Trying to save a few hours could cost us a couple of days stuck in the mud - and Medway mud is the deepest and stickiest known to man.'
Southwick sighed thankfully. 'I was going to suggest we waited for the first of the next flood, sir ... We'll have a fair wind most if not all of the way to Sheerness, so it won't matter that we're butting the young flood. It'll be so near low water we'll be able to see the deep channel: this end of the river has more bends than a snake with colic.'
Ramage glanced at Aitken. 'I've no doubt you've lots of reports, accounts, and so on for me to sign before we sail ... ?'
Aitken lifted a folder which he had put beside him on the settee. 'I have them here, sir.'
'And the bill for that yellow paint?'
'That, too, sir, but Southwick and I had intended it to be a present.'
CHAPTER SIX
The run down the Medway to Sheerness had been notable - as Bowen had commented - for its smell. Medway mud seemed to be a vile and viscous mixture of sewage, blue clay and brown glue, stretching out in a wide band on each side of the fairway as the river twisted from Chatham to Garrison Point at its mouth, where it passed between Grain Spit to larboard and Cheyney Spit to starboard and ran into the Thames at Great Nore.
'Look at those dam' sea birds,' Bowen had exclaimed, pointing at a dozen or so waders. 'By rights they should stick fast in the mess!'
Southwick was more concerned with two birds jinking across the river, uttering sharp cries. 'Ah, if only I had a fowling piece I'd get one of those snipe!' he exclaimed.
'And who'd retrieve for you?' Aitken inquired sarcastically.
As the river widened at Kethole Reach and Saltpan Reach in the approaches to Sheerness, the flood stream - now strong, eddying and curling round the few buoys (marking the entrances on the starboard hand to Half Acre and Stangate Creeks and West Swale) and tilting them upstream - carried swans past them, proud- looking creatures which refused to hurry, moving in a stately fashion to give the Calypso just enough room to pass between them as she passed the mudflats, one of which had a curious name, Bishop Ooze.
'They remind me of three-deckers,' commented Aitken, 'but they tack and wear with less fuss.'
Soon Sheerness was astern and Southwick took the frigate down the fairway clear of Sheerness Middle Sand to meet Sea Reach, turning to larboard at the Great Nore with the flood stream under her to go on a few miles and then turn to come alongside the powder hoys at Black Stakes.
This part of the Thames was grim: to larboard, the Yantlet Flats were flat fields of thick, stinking and bubbling mud with what were like ditches where scour had cut runways. To starboard, the names on the chart told a similar but less smelly story - West Knock and East Knock were the entrances to a deeper channel across Southend Flats, which merged into the Marsh End Sand, Leigh Sand and the long stretch of the Chapman Sands off Leigh.
As the hoys came into sight, Ramage cursed himself for a weakling; he had done nothing about the gunner. The man was a dodger: he evaded responsibility as other men tried to evade diseases. But changing him meant a long argument with the Army's Board of Ordnance, as well as the Navy Board. Both would want written evidence of his incompetence, and there was the rub: as a gunner the man was not incompetent; he looked after the Calypso's guns and magazine; he - well, that was the trouble. He was just a man who dodged responsibility for anything, even boxes of slowmatch; although it was irritating for his fellow officers and his captain, it was not a crime.
Ramage could imagine arguments with both Boards - 'I can't send him away in charge of expeditions' - 'Give an example' -'Well, I haven't one because I daren't send him off' - 'Then how do you know you can't trust him?' And so on.
Well, soon they would be alongside a hoy and taking on nearly ten tons of powder in 120-pound cases and 90-pound barrels. Ramage could be sure that both Aitken and Southwick would be watching every move, whether by seamen or the gunner, as the copper-hooped cases and barrels were hoisted on board, using the staytackle and a cargo net. And of course there would be boxes of portfires, signal rockets and quickmatch already cut into lengths and packed into boxes with sliding lids.
Gunpowder. Curious stuff, just an innocent-looking grey powder. Two sorts, naturally. Most of the powder hoisted on board would be coarse, used in the bore of the guns to fire 12-pounder roundshot. But some, in specially marked containers, would be the fine powder used for priming: put in the priming pans of the 12- pounders, carronades, muskets and pistols. 'Mealed' powder, it used to be called, but the important thing was that it was so fine it took fire the instant the flintlock made a spark (unless the powder was damp or the spark particularly weak). Priming powder was, pound for pound, a good deal more powerful than the coarse sort: load a gun with priming powder instead of coarse and you risked it bursting.
Well, that was the gunner's responsibility: the coarse powder had to be used to fill the flannel cartridges, cloth tubes the diameter of the bore of the guns, and priming powder had to be put in the powder horns issued to gun captains as they went into action and to men armed with pistols or muskets.
One hour later the Calypso was secured alongside a hoy: bow, stern, breastropes and springs had been adjusted and the staytackle rigged, Aitken reported. Ramage had given orders to start loading the powder, after a second check had been made that the galley fire was out, that no men were smoking, that the fire engine had been hoisted up on deck and the cistern filled with seawater, and finally that the washdeck pumps were also rigged and the decks well wetted - running with water, in fact - in case any of the barrels or cases leaked powder while being slung on board.
Going into action? Ramage considered it was nothing compared to taking on powder. When going into action his mind was full of a dozen different problems, quite apart from giving orders and watching the enemy, but taking on powder - there was just the rattle and squeak of the blocks as the men hauled on the tackle to hoist the net on board, and he either paced the deck or sat in his cabin and thought of a tiny dribble of that grey powder falling on the deck, and something crushing it: just enough pressure to cause a detonation. No flame or spark needed. There would be a gigantic explosion and in the place of the Calypso and the hoy there would be a great circle of roiled water with planks and spars (and bodies) falling like solid rain . . . They'd hear the noise as far away as Chatham and Greenwich - and few would doubt what caused it.
With five tons of powder hoisted on board and carried below, Ramage decided he would inspect the magazine and powder room. He had not been inside either since inspecting every inch of the ship when she was captured from the French. That was not quite true, since every Sunday he made his routine inspection of the ship, when he put his head round the door, but he did not enter because no one was allowed in unless he was barefoot or wearing felt shoes (and had been searched for any ferrous object that could clink and make a spark).
He sat down on the settee in his cabin and took off his shoes. Silkin would not be very pleased to find his master had been walking round the ship in white silk stockings, but Silkin had an easy-going master, in Ramage's view; the captain's servant was a valet and many of them serving penurious captains had to spend much of their time mending stockings, shirts and stocks, so a little extra laundry would not overtax Silkin.
He padded out of the cabin, ignored the Marine sentry's startled gaze but returned his salute as usual, and went on deck calling for Aitken.
The first lieutenant joined him by the capstan and was careful to keep his eyes above shoulder level.
'Don't be so damned tactful,' Ramage growled. 'Go below and take your shoes off - we're going to give the magazine and powder room a close inspection. Tell the gunner to stay on deck.'
