Soon the cutter turned to head out towards the Atlantic and with the wind aft she rolled violently, the end of the main boom occasionally dipping in the water. Ramage could see the tiny island of Tarifa ahead, with the Moorish town of Tarifa on the mainland, high-walled with several towers sticking up like enormous tree stumps.
The current was west-going at the moment and stronger close inshore, and because he was anxious to gain every yard to the westward Ramage kept as near the mainland as he dared. The Kathleen was at that moment in sight of at least half a dozen Spanish watchtowers and a couple of castles. If they knew of the scrap of paper locked in his desk, horsemen would already be on their way to Madrid. The tiny ship they were mercifully ignoring - too lazy, perhaps even too contemptuous, to fire at - had the potential to defeat the objective of the combined Fleets of France and Spain ...
On the south side of the Strait the African coast was trending south-west, but it would be dark before they passed Tangier. Now Tarifa was near - he guessed Admiral Cordoba would also be glad to get it abeam. From there, Cordoba would have a short run of about forty miles north-westward along the coast to Cadiz, passing only two capes, de Gracia and Trafalgar with its off-lying shoals.
The Kathleen, however, had 170 miles to sail before reaching the rendezvous off Cape St Vincent, crossing a gulf notorious for its sudden south-easterly gales which could trap ships so they could neither weather Cape St Vincent at one end nor round Cape Trafalgar to run into the Strait of Gibraltar at the other.
By the time Tarifa was abeam and with darkness falling, Ramage saw the weather was rapidly deteriorating so that only a miracle could save them from an easterly gale by dawn, and he had to decide within the next hour whether to get some shelter by following the Spanish coast as it trended round northward to Cape Trafalgar and Cadiz, or steer direct for Cape St. Vincent and risk eventually being forced to run westward before the full force of it, a course which would take him well out into the Atlantic, leaving Cape St. Vincent forty or fifty miles to the north.
Prudent seamanship indicated keeping in the lee of the Spanish coast, but the scrap of paper locked in his drawer; not to mention the Commissioner who'd emphasized every word by thumping his fist on the deck as he said, 'Drive the ship and drive the men as you've never driven 'em before, even if you get a gale a day ...' left him with no choice: he must sail direct and risk the gale. There was some consolation that even if the same gale brought Cordoba's Fleet scudding through the Strait, the Spaniards with their great three-deckers and clumsy transports would have a much harder fight to claw up to Cadiz without getting driven far out into the Atlantic.
The full force of the gale - which was bad even for a Levanter - caught the Kathleen just as she cleared the Strait and entered the Atlantic, with Cape Spartel on her larboard quarter showing where the African coast suddenly swept sharply southward to begin the curve which ended in the Gulf of Guinea, almost on the Equator, while on her starboard beam the mountains of Spain disappeared as they trended north towards Cadiz.
Southwick swore the gale was the worst Levanter he'd ever seen but Ramage, although fearful and yet awed by its majestic, and apparently effortless power, reckoned the Kathleen's smallness exaggerated it. But it could not have caught them at a worse time: the east wind howling uninterrupted for perhaps a thousand miles across the Mediterranean, was now being funnelled through the narrow Strait by the high mountains of Spain and Africa, compressing and increasing its frenetic power just as it met the full strength of the Atlantic current which was flowing into the Mediterranean. Wind against current; the worst combination of all.
Its enormous strength was piling up great waves which rose and rolled and thrust up crests which the wind slashed off in sheets of spindrift and foam, driving it across crest and trough in long angry veins until the whole surface of the sea seemed a mottled, raging cataract of molten green and white marble.
Ramage, standing beside Southwick at the taffrail and looking aft as one wave after another surged up astern, mountains of water, each steeply sloping side threatening to scoop up the ship, each curling breaker atop it apparently intent on sweeping the decks bare of men and gear, was almost too numbed to wonder that a frail box of wood like the Kathleen could ever survive.
On and on came the seas, relentless, seemingly unending, and even more frightening since each contained its strength in itself, in its very vastness, in the smooth, purposeful and powerful way it surged inwards, rising higher and higher until Ramage, his imagination heightened by fear, tiredness and awe, felt he was looking up at the cataract destined to swamp the whole world. The crest of each wave was a curling, hissing jumble of frothing white water broken only by the Kathleen's wake which showed on the wave's face as an insignificant double line of inward-spinning whorls, like the hair springs of clocks.
The hours passed and Ramage was barely conscious of fresh men at the helm as the watches changed. He saw only wave after wave in a wild chase to overtake the cutter. Just as a roaring crest was about to crash down on the Kathleen's deck, the ship's stern began to lift (began, it always seemed, just a moment too late), and the bow dip slightly, as if the ship was starting a hesitant curtsy. Suddenly the crest was right under her counter, first lifting the stern even higher and burying the bow deeper on the forward face and then, as the crest slid forward, tipping the ship like a see-saw in a gigantic pitch which would let the stern sink back on the rear face, the bow lifting high in the air as the crest swept on.
As suddenly as it arrived, that wave would be gone: for a few moments the Kathleen would be almost dead in the water, sunk deep in a trough so her tiny spitfire jib was blanketed, starved of wind. Then once again the next wave would race up astern...
Suddenly Southwick pointed. A couple of hundred yards astern a freak wave was rushing down to them. The crest was solid water, still wedge-shaped and still thrusting itself higher.
Even as they watched the wind's pressure was working on it, and unable to resist its force the crest slowly turned and then toppled to break into a two-foot high rolling, swirling, roaring mass of water sweeping along on the forward side of the wave.
The next moment the cutter dropped into a trough and the wave disappeared from view. Ramage, noting it was the third, saw the first sweep down and pass, turning to make sure Southwick had warned the quartermaster and the men at the helm, banged Southwick on the shoulder and motioned him to grip something firmly, and himself seized an eyebolt beside the stern-chase port. The second wave lifted the cutter enough for Ramage to see the third had grown even larger, rearing up as high as a big house.
In one split second he guessed this time the little Kathleen's stern would never lift in time to avoid being pooped; that the whole wave would crash down on her and then sweep forward, washing away every man on deck, stoving in skylights and ripping open hatches to send tons of water cascading below, and, with no one at the helm, slew the whole ship round so that she broached, lying broadside on to the next wave and probably heeling over on her beam ends.
With the heavy carronades then hanging vertically and breaking loose from their slides and tackles, and bulky casks of provisions and dozens of round shot stowed below smashing their way through the hull planking, the Kathleen would founder.