The escorts simply repeated the Admiral's orders, hoisting the same signal so every ship in the convoy could see it.
"Follow father," Southwick grunted. "But let's hope he knows where he's going."
Once the convoy got out of the lee of Barbados it was much cooler on board the Triton: the damp, cloying atmosphere of Carlisle Bay was left behind as they sailed into the brisk freshness of the Trade winds.
The sea was now a deep blue and frequent shoals of flying fish emerged like silver darts, dropping back into the water after a brief flight a few inches above the waves. Out of the wind, the sun was scorching; the decks were still uncomfortably hot - no one stood still unless he had to - and the pitch between the seams was as soft as when the caulker first poured it. But in the wind seamen moved without bothering to seek out the shade and went less frequently to get a mug of water at the scuttle butt. The burly and red-faced Marine sentry guarding the water supply looked less wilted, although he was careful to hold his cutlass out of the sun. The heat could make metal unbearably hot to touch in less than a quarter of an hour.
"Getting away from the land is like a shower of rain on a flower garden," Southwick commented to Ramage.
"The flowers don't look so wilted!" Ramage said, gesturing towards the seamen.
"Aye, sir, the breeze freshens them up."
"No weeds, either!"
"No, we can be thankful for that," the Master said, mopping his face with a large handkerchief. "Six months and not a flogging ... never heard of longer."
During the next hour, in obedience to a stream of signal flags hoisted from the Lion, the escorts tacked and wore, cajoling and threatening the merchantmen until they were in their proper positions. Eventually the Antelope frigate was right ahead of the convoy, followed by the Lion which in turn was ahead of the leading ship in the centre column. The Lark lugger was astern with the Raisonnable frigate to leeward over on the larboard quarter and the Greyhound frigate to starboard, up to windward.
Ramage took the Triton to the position Admiral Goddard had assigned him on the windward side of the convoy, abreast the Topaz and ahead of the Greyhound.
"A pretty picture," Southwick growled, waving at the convoy. "I'd like to think these mules were secretly plotting to drive the Admiral mad," he continued maliciously, careful the seamen could not hear him. "The masters know that if they get into exactly the right position for an hour or two it'll show the Admiral they can do it, and he'll go berserk when they start spreading themselves across the ocean..."
Ramage laughed. For the moment the convoy was in perfect formation, the symmetry spoiled only by the extra ship, the eighth and last in the Topaz's column. Southwick saw him looking at her.
"Something about that ship, sir," he commented, pointing at the Peacock. "That hull wasn't built in England, nor those sails cut by Englishmen."
"Scotsmen, maybe; perhaps she's a Clyde ship!"
The Master took off his hat and scratched his head. "No, I-"
"I know what you mean, but she is probably a prize bought by someone or other. And in ballast - a runner come over to find a cargo. She looks odd with all that freeboard. You're used to seeing ships fully laden - aye, fully laden and a few tons more!"
After looking at her again through his telescope, Southwick said, "That's it; she was a prize. French built, or I'm a Dutchman."
The merchantmen and escorts were reaching to the northwest with a comfortable quartering wind and pitching only slightly.
"With a steady breeze like this, let's hope some of the mules are having another look at their standing and running rigging," Southwick said sourly.
"You're an optimist: they've already sailed four thousand miles from England with it; they're just hoping it'll last another few hundred until they get into Kingston."
As if aware that with the routine of watches this would be one of the few opportunities for chatting with his captain, Southwick said, "I still don't see why the Lion is out there ahead of the convoy, sir. Her place is to windward; she ought to be out beyond the Greyhound," he added, nodding towards the frigate astern of the Triton.
"I think it's the Admiral's idea, not Croucher's," Ramage said, since the Master was echoing the question that occurred to him the moment he received his latest orders. "Croucher's an odd fellow but he knows his job."
"Odd!" Southwick snorted. "After that court-martial you call him odd? Well, the Admiral has weakened himself by a ship o' the line by sitting out there to leeward. The Lion can't do a thing unless we meet an enemy dead ahead: she'll never be able to beat up to windward to get at a privateer unless there's a gale o' wind blowing. We ought to be ready for light airs, not a gale o' wind. Up to windward, that's where the Admiral ought to be with that haystack, so he can run down to anything. Hmmp - hey! Watch your luff!" he suddenly bellowed at the quartermaster, who gestured to the men at the wheel.
Within an hour Barbados was already so far astern that the curvature of the earth dropped the beaches on the west coast below the horizon, hiding the band of almost luminous pale green sea that marked the shallows and reefs stretching out from the shore. The palm trees had long since merged into strips of dark green, and from this distance it was clear that the land was losing its parched brown appearance as the thirsty dry earth soaked up the first heavy rains heralding the approach of the rainy season. Rainy season, Ramage thought to himself; a nice euphemism for the hurricane season.
For anyone brought up in the uncertain and unpredictable weather of European waters, the comparative predictability of the Caribbean - outside of the hurricane season - was almost unsettling, Ramage realized. It was so predictable that it made a man apprehensive; it was like worrying when too many things went right.
At this end of the Caribbean the wind always blew between north-east and south-east; wind from any other direction - apart from the land and sea breeze - usually meant the weather was about to change for the worse. And even then the change was predictable - the wind south or south-west, bringing rain and stronger, gusty winds.
Almost always the wind dropped in the evening and stayed light or calm throughout a starlit night. About nine o'clock next morning a breeze would start ruffling the water and steadily increasing until it was a fresh breeze by nine or ten o'clock. It was the best time of the day in the Caribbean - the sun bright and warm but not yet scorching, the wind cool and not yet strong, and the sea flat. It was the time the Caribbean seemed the finest sea in the world for ships and seamen. By ten-thirty it would usually be a strong breeze, except in the hurricane season, and the seas would begin to build up, short seas which sent the spray flying in sparkling showers from the bow of the ship beating to windward.
Small clouds would start appearing from nowhere, small balls of fluffed white cotton which soon formed into regular lines running east and west, the bottom of each cloud flattening and the top forming a weird shape. Some looked like the marble effigies of ancient knights and their wives recumbent atop their tombs; others were turtles, alligators and mythical beasts. Often they looked like the profiles of politicians lying flat on their backs, glassy-eyed and copied straight from one of Gillray's more outrageous cartoons.
By noon most well-found ships would be carrying all plain sail and making their maximum speed, while one of the King's ships in a hurry would cheerfully hoist out studding sails. Then by four o'clock the wind would start to falter and by five o'clock would be light and fitful while the clouds began shrinking and vanishing in the reverse order of the strange way they appeared. Soon after six o'clock the sun would set in an almost cloudless sky and darkness would fall with a startling suddenness, and another tropical day would be over.