information.
'Now,' Ramage said, 'I want you to remember how many galleys there were, including the two you were in.'
They thought a few moments and then one of them said definitely: 'Eight. Five of them were big ones and we were in the three smaller ones.'
'Were all the Mazara men put in the same galleys?'
'No,' the man said. 'We were split up. It was a matter of chance which galley you went to: we were all mixed up in the barracks. This last time I was chained up in the galley next to a man from Sciacca: it was just the way we were marched out of the barracks. That's why so many men from Mazara are still at Sidi Rezegh: they were not marched out to man the other galleys. Ah, mamma mia, how were we to know which of us was to be lucky?'
'How many men do you think there are left in the barracks now?' Ramage asked the man, who seemed to be of above average intelligence.
The man shrugged his shoulders helplessly. 'I don't know. Perhaps five hundred. Only a very few of us were marched out to the three galleys: we left behind a lot of men. Oh, the poor fellows: they thought they were lucky, avoiding a few days' rowing.'
'And what about the women - how many do you think?'
The man thought for some time. 'Not two hundred - probably about a hundred and fifty. Most of them were young girls: the Saraceni did not take many adult women. They think the young girls last longer,' he added bitterly.
Ramage looked at Southwick. 'Have you any questions?'
The old man waved his sketches and said cheerfully: 'No, sir, we've added a bit more with those depths, and that's my main concern now.'
Ramage thanked the mayor and the men, shook hands with all of them and returned to the cutter. It was always surprising how the ground seemed to sway underfoot after a long time at sea, especially if going to windward.
'Now for Sciacca,' Ramage said. 'We'll see if we can find some more soundings for you.'
At Sciacca the routine was the same: the Calypso and the rest of the small flotilla anchored off while Ramage and Southwick went on shore in a cutter of which Jackson was the coxswain. They found the mayor who rounded up the former slaves, several of whom had seen the ships anchoring and watched Ramage come on shore, congregating on the quay to greet him. Ramage gave his usual explanation for the questions that would follow, and this time Southwick started by drawing a sketch in the dust outside the mayor's house, explaining what he was doing for the men unused to charts and maps.
The answers to the first questions hardly varied from those given by the men at Mazara: they thought there were four or five hundred men left behind and about one hundred and fifty women. They agreed there had been eight galleys, including the three they were in, and that the other five were bigger, needing many more men to row them.
Ramage then used the diagram in the dust to question them about distances. They all agreed on the distance from the quay to the barracks, and from the quay to the brothel. There were four cannon and no guard on top of the fort. The big difference came in judging the population of Sidi Rezegh: the men were all agreed it was at least a thousand more than Sciacca which, the mayor said, meant that the Saraceni numbered more than eight thousand.
The men were able to add more depths: several of them had been out in two of the big galleys and had noted how much cable had been let go when they anchored. More important, they confirmed the position of the shoal in the middle of the harbour and one of them was able to give rough bearings from the fort and the barracks.
From what the mayor said, it was obvious to Ramage that there were more men from Sciacca still in Sidi Rezegh than from either Marsala or Mazara and that by chance there had been fewer Sciacca men in the two galleys.
The worst part of the visit came when Ramage and Southwick took their farewells. The men and the mayor sought reassurances that their brothers, friends, wives, daughters and nieces would be rescued: reassurances that Ramage was reluctant to give, knowing the small size of his force.
Back on board the Calypso, with Aitken and Southwick, Ramage spread Southwick's two drawings out on his desk and asked the master: 'Do you think we have enough detail to sail into the harbour?'
'I can never have too much,' Southwick answered, 'but I doubt if we'll get much more that matters from Empedocle. I'll make fair copies of these for the rest of the flotilla and a copy of the map for our gallant major.'
Ramage looked up at Aitken. 'How are the troops getting on with embarking and disembarking from the boats?'
'Very well, sir. Far better than I expected. We have a lot to thank Hill for: he suggested putting a Marine in charge of every five soldiers, to show them how to do things, and it was so successful that I took the liberty of suggesting it to the first lieutenant of the Amalie. Then Kenton started the boats competing against each other, and that spread to the Amalie. 'In fact,' Aitken said, 'the only question mark now seems to be whether the gunnery in the Amalie and the two sloops is up to the standard we like.'
Ramage nodded. Gunnery training was very much up to individual captains. Some made an obsession of it; others scarcely bothered because guns firing scorched paintwork and scored decks. Well, the flotilla could sail south under easy sail for a couple of days and give the guns' crews plenty of exercise.
In the meantime, Ramage thought, he would have to put a lot of thought into how they were going to attack Sidi Rezegh. And that, he realized, was the wrong way of thinking about it: they were not going to attack Sidi Rezegh as such; they were just going to raid the place and free the slaves from the barracks and the women from the brothels: if that could be done without disturbing the Saracens at prayer in the mosque, so be it.
It had been interesting making the charts and the map: it had given shape to somewhere that had hitherto been only a name. Now, if he closed his eyes, he felt he could imagine the look of the place. In fact, once Southwick had completed his first fair copies, he would try and draw an elevation of the place: that would help the flotilla find their way about. Not every sailor, Marine and soldier could read a chart or a map.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By now Jackson had become an authority among most of the ship's company: he had been on shore with the captain and master at all three ports and he had heard them discussing their findings.
'I tell you what bothers me,' Stafford said as he sat at the mess table, 'and that's how many of these A-rabs we'll find at this place.'
'Arabs,' Jackson corrected. 'You worry too much. Everything will be all right.'
'It was a damned close-run affair at Licata,' Stafford maintained stubbornly. 'I still don't know what would have happened if the Calypso hadn't turned up like that.'
'We'd have scraped through but we'd have lost a lot more men,' Jackson said.
'Well, we lost enough as it was. I ask you, this time we've got to capture a whole A-rab town.'
'No, we haven't,' Jackson said mildly. 'We're just going in to rescue the slaves and the women. That's all.'
'That's all, eh?' jeered Stafford. 'You don't really think these A-rabs are going to let us walk off with their slaves just like that, do you?'
'They might not be able to stop us. If we're quick.'
'Quick? Well, you said yourself there's a fort at the entrance to the harbour.'
'Steady, Staff. If you'd known the odds would you have been happy at Licata? Yet it worked out all right.'
'Sheer luck,' Stafford declared. 'We was lucky.'
'But luck always comes into it,' Jackson persisted. 'It's good luck if it happens to you, and bad luck if to the enemy. And admit it, Staff, with Mr Ramage we get more than our share of luck.'
'Is it luck?' Gilbert asked quizzically. 'Most of the time I think luck is good planning, and the reason for what you call Mr Ramage's luck is that he plans carefully.'
'Is right,' Albert said unexpectedly. 'Luck no, planning yes. Bad plans that fail are blamed on bad luck. Is an excuse.'
'Well, the Calypso turning up at Licata was luck,' Stafford said stubbornly. 'There was no planning about that.'
'No, but there's no saying we'd have lost either,' Jackson said.
'Come on, Jacko, you never thought we'd get out of there alive. What with all those skimitars.'
'Scimitars,' Jackson corrected automatically. 'Anyway, I don't agree we'd have been beaten. Yes, we'd have lost a lot more men, but I think we'd have pulled through. The minute they realized all their boats were being sunk and they couldn't escape - that's when they'd have broke.'
'You're saying that because your gun was firing on the boats,' Stafford said. 'You'd have thought different if you'd been out on the jetty playing cut and thrust with that screaming 'orde.'
'Staff, I don't know when we haven't been fighting screaming hordes: it doesn't make any difference whether they are French or Saracen. You're as dead whether you get your head cut off by a Saracen scimitar or a French cutlass.'
'Very comforting,' Stafford said. 'I'll sleep better tonight knowing that!' , 'All those women,' Gilbert said, as if talking to himself. 'Just imagine, if those Arabs were raiding a town in France and carrying off all the young women. It is too horrible to think about.'
'I know what you're going to say,' Stafford said. 'We have to take any risk to rescue the women. But 'ow are the Italian husbands left behind going to treat those women after we've rescued them? After they've been in an A-rab brothel for a few weeks? I'll tell you: they won't want anything to do with them. It's the women I feel sorry for. They're doomed if they stay in the brothels, and they're doomed if we rescue them. All these Italian men have a rotten streak in them: the streak of pride. They're quick to see an insult, but they won't be big enough to forgive those women something they couldn't avoid. If anyone's to blame it is the men, for not fighting off the Saracens.'
'You're probably right, Staff,' Jackson said, 'but there's nothing we can do about it. Just rescue them and hope for the best.'
'Kill as many Saracens as you can, that's the only revenge,' Rossi said. 'You're right about the Italian men; it's one thing I'm not proud about. Not that Sicilians are real Italians,' he added.
'But it would be the same if the women were Genoese,'' Stafford persisted. 'You chaps from Genoa would still treat them wrongly.'
'We would and it would be unfair,' Rossi agreed. 'But that's the way life is, and you can't change it.'
'Give the bread barge a fair wind,' Stafford told Rossi, who was sitting at the outboard end of the table. 'I'm hungry.' He took out one of the hard biscuits that
