Yes, there was the breakwater protecting Cadiz harbour, the Muelle de San Felipe, jutting out to the north-east. The church of San Francisco was at the landward end and, further on, two towers and yet another church (Carmen, noted on Southwick's chart as 'Conspicuous') and the whole city (really a small town) built round the Torre de Tavira, a watch tower which could see all round the compass.
'General quarters, Mr Hill,' Ramage said quietly and noticed that Aitken and Southwick had come on deck. The lieutenant gave the order which started bosun's mates hurrying through the ship, their calls twittering as they shouted vile threats to get the men out of their hammocks and standing to the guns. They would greet the dawn, as did every one of the King's ships in wartime, with guns loaded and run out, as ready to tackle an enemy as greet a friend. The deck wash pumps groaned asthmatically as they ran water over the decks, to be followed by men sprinkling sand. There were distant shouted orders and then the dull rumble as the guns were run out.
'Ship's company at general quarters, sir,' Hill reported.
'Very well,' Ramage said out of habit, and waited for the hail.
It came first from the lookout on the larboard bow. 'See a grey goose at a mile,' he bellowed in the traditional way of greeting daylight - or as much daylight as would allow that feat.
'A short mile,' Ramage commented to Hill. The lookout was unlucky that instead of the usual (before the blockade) empty horizon there was the city of Cadiz, complete with cathedral, towers, castle and long stone mole, all less than a mile away.
'Send the lookouts aloft, but keep the men at general quarters,' Ramage said. The wind was still east; he walked over to the binnacle box drawer and reassured himself that the copy of Popham's Code was there, along with the Signal Book.
Looking at the Mole of San Felipe, he took his telescope from the drawer and pulled the tube until the engraved ring was lined up. He scanned along the mole, shifting to one side so that the foremast was not in the way.
'Come round a point to larboard,' he told Hill: the Mole was obscuring too much of the anchorage. He waited a couple of minutes and then lifted the telescope again. The nearest ships of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain were clearly visible.
He snapped the telescope shut and, in a couple of paces, was at the binnacle box drawer, taking out Popham's Code and flicking over the pages', checking the words (in alphabetical order) and the numbers beside them.
'Orsini,' he snappedv 'make to the Euryalus the following.
'Telegraphic code flag; then 249 - 'enemy', 354 - 'have', 864 -'their', 875 - 'top', 756 - 'sails', 986 - 'yards', 1374 - 'hoisted'. Got that? Right, get it hoisted as quick as you can.
'Mr Hill, stand by to heave-to the ship. The enemy seem to have called in their gunboats.'
'Yes, sir: I was going to report that as soon as you had finished with the signal.'
The gunboats - boats from the ships of the Combined Fleet with a small gun mounted temporarily in the bow - had regularly patrolled the few hundred yards directly in front of the harbour, looking as threatening as water boatmen on a village pond.
Ramage opened the telescope and looked again. Yes, several of the ships were hoisting in boats, swigging away at staytackles and swinging the boats in to nest them on top of the spare booms and spars. Topsail yards hoisted, along with boats . . . today, October 19, was going to be the day the Combined Fleet sailed from Cadiz, of that he was sure.
'The signal's sent and the Euryalus has acknowledged, sir,' Orsini reported.
'Ship hove-to on the starboard tack, sir,' Hill reported.
'I'm going below to wash and shave,' Ramage said. 'Keep a sharp eye on the Euryalus for signals,' he told Orsini. To Hill, he said: 'Pass the word the moment there's any sign of the enemy ships weighing anchor.'
Shaving in cold water - with the ship's company at general quarters the galley fire had been doused - helped waken him thoroughly: he was too impatient to strop the razor sufficiently, and this morning the soap was reluctant to lather, so that each stroke of the razor seemed as though he was wrenching out each whisker by the roots. With his eyes watering he finally rinsed his face and then combed his hair.
Silkin waited at the door with clean underwear, fresh stockings and newly polished shoes, along with a clean stock. Ramage dressed leisurely. Thus were legends started. The captain had felt greasy and bristly and tired, in no shape to think very clearly after an almost sleepless night, and as soon as the morning's signal had been sent off he had shaved and changed. But within a month (if they were all still alive by then) the ship's company would have embroidered the tale so that Captain Ramage was having a leisurely shave while thirty-four ships of the line of the Combined Fleet prepared to sail and give battle with the Calypso. Ramage grinned to himself. He had heard many similar stories told about brother captains, and guessed they had similar origins. Anyway, they were a sign that a ship's company was proud of their captain and the ship, and if it made them fight better, no harm was done. Seamen had keen eyes, and if an officer was a braggart they quickly ignored him, simply obeying orders.
The marine sentry was announcing Orsini.
'Mr Hill's compliments, sir, but the Euryalus has just repeated our signal to the Sirius, and one of the enemy has just let fall a topsail.'
Ramage pulled on a stocking. So the signal was already on its way across the fifty miles to Lord Nelson's fleet, and the enemy were making the first (the first of thousands!) move towards sailing. The significant report would be when the first of them hove up her anchors.
Each ship would have at least a couple of anchors down - that was, apart from any other considerations, the only way of packing so many ships into such a confined anchorage without them swinging into each other. Heavy anchors and a muddy bottom: Ramage could picture the clunking of the pawls on the capstans - and the stench of the mud on the cable, with water similar to sewage being squeezed out of the strands of the rope as it came through the hawsehole . . . pity the poor fellows down in the cabletier whose job it was to coil the cables as they passed below.
Finally Ramage was dressed and he went up to the quarterdeck. In the half hour he had been below it had turned into a fine day: three miles away to the eastward there was the gentle slope of vineyards, and then the land trended southward to the village of Santa Maria at the entrance to a small river and became dunes. They continued on to the marshes and saltponds on the other side of Cadiz, separated from the spit by the channel in which most of the Combined Fleet were moored.
He examined Cadiz with the telescope. There was no flag on the Torre de Tavira, but that three-decker there, French (was she Villeneuve's flagship, the Bucentaure?), was making signals. One ship had just started catting her anchors. Another, Spanish, was at short stay and moving ahead slowly as the capstan hauled in the remaining anchor cable. He examined the ship's masts. There were men out along the fore and maintopsail yards - obviously throwing off gaskets.
Yes - there's the foretopsail let fall. The breeze is light, not enough to shake out the creases in the canvas. Now they're bracing the yards sharp up - the captain is anxious to get under way the moment the anchor is aweigh, so that the wind does not drift him sideways on to the mudbank only a few yards on his larboard side.
Ah, the other anchor is breaking the surface, and they've let fall the maintopsail. And there goes the maincourse and now the forecourse, and headsails are being hoisted. She's under way.
'Mr Orsini,' Ramage said briskly, 'to the Euryalus: make number 370.'
Orsini, out of habit, said: 'Number 370, sir, 'Enemy's ships are coming out of port, or getting under sail'.'
'Stand by to get under way,' Ramage told Hill. A Spanish three-decker's broadside as she passed the Calypso at close range could reduce the frigate to so much firewood. There was plenty of shallow water on the east side of the bay, or northwards towards Rota, where the Calypso could sail but a 74 or bigger would go aground. The frigate's job was to watch and report to the Euryalus, not fight ...
CHAPTER TWELVE
The big French ship of the line came out of Cadiz Roads with almost pathetic slowness. The wind soon dropped away to random zephyrs, so that her sails, in billowing curves when she got under way, flattened to hanging curtains of canvas by the time she was abreast of where the Calypso had been hove-to.
Ramage had seized the opportunity before the breeze went light to get out to seaward, deciding not to risk being trapped in the bay by the French and Spanish frigates he knew were anchored in Cadiz.
He watched as the Frenchman slowly steered northwards for Rota (at times turning round completely as she lost the wind and was at the mercy of the current) and then saw a second ship get under way and start struggling to get out of the Roads.
The first ship was the Algésiras, which his list showed him was the flagship of Rear-Admiral Charles de Magon. When the second ship finally cleared the entrance and then lost the wind for several minutes, turning like a languid dancer, Ramage saw that the name carved across her transom (and heavily gilded: enough to catch the eye at this distance as it glinted in the sun) was the Achille.
Although he was making for a position due north of the Castillo de San Sebastián, Ramage's last glimpse into Cadiz Roads showed him that a French frigate (the Hermione, he guessed) had managed to weigh and set sail, but almost immediately must have lost the wind because now her boats were towing her out, hard work against what was now a flood tide.
With the wind falling away and the young flood beginning to carry him out of position, Ramage ordered the Calypso to anchor, and the best bower splashed down into four fathoms just short of the El Banquete shoal, a mile north-west of the Castillo. The Spaniards had never opened fire from the castle, but if they started now the Calypso might be in trouble: with no wind and having to weigh anchor, the young flood might carry her on to Punta del Nao, a vicious-looking rocky peninsula just north-east of the castle.
But the castle guns remained quiet and the Calypso swung at anchor, watching the Algésiras, Achille and Hermione (eventually Orsini had read the name on her stern) struggle up towards Rota, revolving like sunflowers as they lost a puff.
As the men at alternate guns were allowed to go below for a meal and Southwick went through the daily ritual of taking a noon sight (although it was easy enough to take a bearing of the castle, and a vertical sextant angle would give the distance for those unable to estimate it) Ramage watched the Euryalus and Sirius drift, becalmed.
Well, Ramage commented to Southwick, today the wind was being neutral: it becalmed the Combined Fleet and it becalmed Lord Nelson - although, fifty miles
