'Very well, sir,' Rennick said and saluted before hurrying down the quarterdeck ladder.
Le Jason was lurching rather than rolling now: as Ramage watched the stricken ship he could imagine the hundreds of tons of water sloshing from one side and then to the other, each time the weight heeling the ship and throwing men off their feet.
'Her rate of fire is slowing down, sir,' Aitken said. 'The water has probably flooded her magazine, apart from the difficulty of laying the guns.'
'She hasn't much time left.'
'I wonder why the Frenchman hasn't hauled down his colours.'
'It doesn't make much difference whether he surrenders or not,' Ramage said sourly. 'He's going to sink whether or not he's hauled down his colours. Anyway, he's fought well. It was his navigation that put him on that rock: but for that I think we'd have had an even tougher fight.'
The more he thought about it, the more Ramage was convinced that his gunners were only wasting powder: they could not damage the enemy more effectively than she was already, and it was time for the guns' crews to get muskets and pikes, pistols and tomahawks ready for the influx of French survivors.
He gave the order to Aitken which would silence the guns for the first time since they had opened fire on the first frigate, and which would send the men to get the weapons allocated to them in the quarters bill. Most of the men had a note against their name indicating what weapons they were to have, and whether they were boarders if the Calypso should board another ship.
A sudden hush fell over the Calypso as the guns stopped firing and all that Ramage could hear was the rush of the sea against the hull and the occasional slatting of a sail. He realized that he was deafened by the broadsides and he held his nose and blew hard, but it made no difference.
Southwick hurried back to the quarterdeck. 'Those guns are trained round, sir,' he said. 'We can't get the tackles hooked on to anything substantial, so there's no telling how they'll recoil. Still, only have to fire them once, I expect,' he said complacently.
'Probably not even once,' Ramage said. 'We'll point them out to the French officers: that should do the trick.'
Even as he spoke he watched the French frigate heel right over until her deck on the larboard side was in the water. She seemed to stay there for an age, and then, as though tired of the struggle, she very slowly capsized: the masts came down below horizontal, the yards slewing round, and the trucks of the masts dipped into the sea and then began to sink as the ship continued turning.
She turned very slowly, great bubbles of air bursting out through the hatchways and ports. Ramage saw the Tricolour dip into the water and then there were splashes as guns broke loose and dropped through the ship's side.
'Furl the maintopsail,' Ramage snapped at Aitken, and to Southwick he said: 'Get the boats hauled round ready.'
From a distance of fifty yards Ramage found the sight of the frigate sinking both sad and, in another sense, a relief. It was sad because the sinking of any handsome ship - and Le Jason was a handsome ship - was always distressing, and yet a relief because her guns could not kill or wound any more men of the Calypso. While the boats were being hauled round alongside, Southwick was shouting orders for the boats' crews to stand by, and while the men left the guns and ran to their stations, Ramage watched Le Jason. She had turned over completely and was lying in the water like a great turtle. Her copper sheathing was green except near the waterline, where it was pitted, restored to its normal colour by shots which had torn into it 'twixt wind and water.
Great gouts of air escaped as the capsized hull rolled; then it gave a gigantic convulsion as though shaking itself free of something, and Ramage guessed that the masts had come adrift. A minute or two later he saw first one and then another mast break water close beside the hull, a tangle of spars and rigging, and now freed of their weight the hull began to slide below the surface, water erupting in' little volcanoes, propelled by random air pockets.
The surface of the sea was scattered with floating wreckage. Here and there he could see men, random black figures, clinging to spars.
Now all that was left was a great circle of smooth water, punctuated every now and again by a bubble of air coming up from the sinking ship. More pieces of wreckage, spars and other pieces of wood breaking loose came up to the surface, shooting out of the water like lances with the force of their buoyancy.
By now Aitken had the Calypso lying-to, and Ramage told him: 'Get the boats away and start picking up survivors. Two Marines in every boat as guards.'
Within five minutes the Calypso's four boats were rowing round, through the wreckage, dragging men out of the water and, with little ceremony, tossing them into the bottom of the boats.
The first boat came back to the Calypso with more than twenty survivors. The two Marine guards looked almost sheepish because the rescued Frenchmen were coughing or vomiting; there was no fight left in even one of them.
Rennick was waiting with Ramage by the entryport and as soon as the survivors arrived on deck they were escorted, five at a time, onto the fo'c'sle.
'We've nothing to worry about from those fellows for an hour or so,' Rennick remarked.
'No, it's the old story of only a few of them being able to swim.'
'I don't think many have escaped from the ship, sir,' Rennick said.
Ramage shook his head. 'No. I did a very rough count and saw about a hundred. Looks as though more than half of them went down with the ship.'
'Yes, even though she was rolling heavily, she went very suddenly in the end.'
When the third boat came alongside the cox'n shouted up: 'We've got a couple of officers here, sir!'
When the two men were helped up the ship's side, clothes torn and hair soaking, Ramage walked over to them and said in French: 'Perhaps you would introduce yourselves.'
The elder of the two bowed, coughing at the same time: 'Jean-Louis Peyrafitte, lieutenant de vaisseau, and captain of Le Jason, frigate. This,' he indicated the other man, 'is the second lieutenant. He was with me on the quarterdeck.'
'M. Peyrafitte,' Ramage said, 'I am afraid you have lost at least half your ship's company.'
'I know. It was my fault. I did not realize she was so near capsizing. I should have cleared the decks.'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'It was easier to see from over here,' he said quietly. 'You fought until the last moment.'
The Frenchman looked up for the first time. 'You think so?'
Ramage nodded. 'You were rolling so much that I don't know how your men aimed their guns.'
Now it was the turn of the Frenchman to shrug. He gestured round the Calypso's decks and then up at the masts. 'They were not very successful,' he said sadly.
'They were earlier,' Ramage said grimly. 'I lost some good men.'
He turned to Rennick. 'Put a Marine guard on these two and then take them down to my cabin: they can dry off there.'
Rennick was about to protest that the wardroom would be more suitable when he realized that Ramage was paying a small tribute to the French captain's bravery. 'Very well, sir,' he said.
Ramage saw Orsini and told him: 'Go down and tell my steward to give these two men towels and dry clothes.'
For more than three quarters of an hour the boats combed the wreckage for survivors, but when they were finally recalled they had found only one hundred and sixty-three men. The only officers to survive were still the two found by the third boat, the captain and second lieutenant. Most of the others, Ramage guessed, had stayed with their divisions of guns.
Finally, the four boats were hoisted on board, the foretopsail and maintopsail were hoisted, and Ramage gave orders for the Calypso to wear round and set a course for Capraia.
'I wonder what we'll find with the other frigate,' Southwick said.
Ramage laughed. 'You want two frigates in one day, eh?'
'I don't see why not,' the master said.
'Pass the word for Bowen - providing he's not in the middle of operating. I want to know what the butcher's bill comes to.'
Bowen came up on deck, his clothes still bloodstained, and reported to Ramage.
'Twelve dead from gunshot wounds and splinters, five badly wounded from splinters, and seven slightly wounded, gunshot and splinters, plus one man completely dazed when the gun was dismounted. It's only the second time I've seen such a case, but he is speechless and although he's not deaf, he doesn't understand what is said to him.'
'We've been lucky,' Ramage said grimly. 'If Le Jason had not had that leak, we could have lost half a hundred men.'
Bowen looked up at the ragged group of men up on the fo'c'sle. 'At least. Are those the French survivors?'
'A hundred and sixty-three, and two officers.'
'How many men did she have on board?'
'I haven't asked the captain yet, but probably about two hundred and fifty.'
CHAPTER SIX
The trip back to Capraia was a run of less than two hours, and Ramage steered for a position on the coast about three miles north of the little port. Retook the Calypso in to three quarters of a mile from the beach and then, wary of the kind of outlying rocks that had holed Le Jason, brought the frigate head to wind and anchored.
'Hoist out the boats, Mr Aitken,' he said after Southwick assured him the anchor was well dug in. 'Let's get rid of our passengers.'
During the run back to the island he had a long talk with Peyrafitte. Le Jason had had a complement of two hundred and seventy-seven when she began the action, so that one hundred and twelve men had been lost, either from the Calypso's gunfire or by drowning.
The French captain confirmed that the ship had hit a rock off Capraia and the impact had started several planks. At first the pump had kept up with the leak but after that Le Jason's speed through the water while engaging the Calypso had made it worse, and towards the end he was having to take men away from the guns to replace those exhausted at the pump.
Peyrafitte, a stocky and black-haired man with deep brown eyes, said ruefully: 'But for the leak, we may have taken you!' 'You had fifty more men and we had the same number of guns,' Ramage said. 'We should both have lost a great number of men.'
'I did anyway,' Peyrafitte commented.
