Ramage and the drum beat

'No idea, sir,' Edwards admitted frankly, making no attempt to avoid Ramage's eyes, which seemed to bore right through him. 'Never heard of a thing like that before. No experience of powder exploding in an unconfined space. Lose p'raps two-thirds of the effect.'

'If you loaded up a boat and saw it explode, do you reckon you could then judge how much more or less powder you'd need in another one to damage the frigate?'

Edwards paused, his eyes almost closing with concentration. Then with complete confidence he nodded. 'Yes sir.' He remembered how the Captain hated anyone adding 'I think so' to a statement.

'Very well, you'll have the chance of seeing one. I want to force the Dons to surrender and take a tow. I don't want to sink 'em unless we have to.'

'Indeed we don't,' Southwick exclaimed, 'think of all that prize money going to the bottom!'

'So,' continued Ramage, 'first of all I want to explode a boat about fifty yards away. The Spaniards will have been wondering why the devil a boat with a canvas cover over it was being drifted down towards them. When it suddenly blows up they'll get the shock of their lives. So I want a big bang and lots of smoke. Then, while they're still feeling shaky, I shall send a boat over with a flag of truce, warn 'em the next explosion boat will remove their stern, and suggest they surrender.'

'And if they don't, sir?'

'We blow their stern off,' Ramage said grimly, rubbing the scar on his forehead.

Neither man said anything and Ramage, knowing speed was now essential, snapped, 'Now look at this sketch. Here is the Spaniard. We approach like this and lower the boat here, and tow it on a long warp - a grass warp because it must float. Then we carry on towards the Spaniard, making sure we keep out of the arcs of her broadside guns, and begin to turn here, and then we heave-to to windward. The boat should drift round like a tail, and I want it to explode about fifty yards from the Spaniards.

'Your fuse, Edwards, will be lit when we get to there and must fire the powder when we are there. We're making about five knots. I want at least a mile to get the boat into the right position. Say fifteen minutes from the moment you light the fuse.

'Right, Mr. Southwick, prepare the boat and a long grass warp. Use the jolly boat and we'll have to lower it loaded. Edwards, decide how much powder you want, how you'll fire it, and get it all loaded into the boat. Any questions?'

'Yes, sir,' said Edwards. 'The fuse. Fifteen minutes is a long time.'

'Yes, but I daren't risk less. Hadn't you better use a portfire?'

'I was just thinking that, sir. Safer than fuses. I'll use two, in case there's a dollop of spray or one goes out. They burn for fifteen minutes anyway, so I don't have to cut'em.'

'Don't forget we'll be towing the boat at five knots: there'll be more than a dollop of spray flying over it.'

'Aye aye, sir. How much time have I got to prepare?'

Ramage looked at the frigate. 'A quarter of an hour. And Mr. Southwick, make sure the deck is thoroughly wetted round the jolly boat, A few loose grains of powder ...'

Edwards went down to the darkness of a magazine. He could think better there. It had the same peace as the fish cuddy in his father's boat when the wind howled on deck, because the lead lining of the magazine with the dampened fire screen hanging down deadened the noise. He sat down on a stack of cartridges, feeling the flannel of the bags coarse against his hand, and went through every point.

First the powder. Should he use it in its special barrels or in cartridge bags? It'd have to be cartridge bags because barrels would need separate fuses and they probably wouldn't explode simultaneously.

How much powder? Well, to breach a wall you generally reckoned on fifty to a hundred pounds, depending on its thickness, and that had to be tamped down with a covering of ten times its own weight of earth. Each flannel cartridge weighed just half a pound, and he finally decided on a hundred. It was only a guess, but anyway he daren't use more for the first boat because if he had to increase the quantity for the second one he'd be left very short of cartridges for the guns, since the rest of the powder was still in the copper-hooped barrels

Edwards stood up and told the magazine men to pass a hundred cartridges out through the scuttle, calling to the powder boys to carry them up on deck and stack them near the jolly boat in the stern davits. After sending a man to warn the Master that the powder was on its way up, he sat down again. How was he going to fix the portfires? There was no question of just making a hole in the flannel bag of a cartridge and jamming one in - that would be a quick way of blowing up the Kathleen!No, he'd have to use a barrel, jamming the long cylindrical tube of the portfire into the bung-hole, then wedging each barrel among the bags of powder.

He ordered two of the magazine men to get a couple of small barrels and then fill them with powder; another to get a lump of pitch and a ball of caulking cotton from the carpenter's mate, and two pieces of leather and some marline from the bosun's mate and bring them to him at the main hatch. With that Edwards went to see the Captain.

He saluted Ramage and said apologetically: 'I know we are at quarters, sir, but I need to heat up some pitch.'

Ramage knew the man too well to question the necessity, but for safety the galley fire had been doused immediately the drum beat to quarters. The only light left in the ship was illuminating the magazine. He remembered the little oil lamp left behind by the Kathleen's previous captain.

'The oil lamp for heating my tea urn will do. Get my steward to bring it up from the cabin. You've thought of a way of securing the portfires?'

Edwards nodded and pointed to the paper and pencil on the binnacle. 'May I just show you, sir?'

He drew a quick sketch and Ramage nodded. 'Wedge it among the bags so there's no chance of it moving. And make sure the canvas over the boat is wet so it doesn't catch fire.'

Edwards nodded. 'I'm afraid we'll probably lose three minutes on the portfires, sir: I hadn't allowed for the base going into the barrel. Difficult to know exactly when the burning part will reach the powder. I can't guarantee anything more than twelve to fifteen minutes.'

Ramage thought quickly. The boat would be drifting for perhaps three minutes. Well, the first one was only a demonstration, so whether it exploded fifty or a hundred yards from the hulk wouldn't matter much.

'Very well, you can't help that. Carry on, then.'

Within a couple of minutes Edwards was sitting on the coaming at the forward side of the mainhatch with one small wooden barrel filled with powder held between his knees, bung uppermost, and another near by. Beside him on his left were two portfires - fifteen-inch-long cylindrical tubes filled with a composition of saltpetre, sulphur and gunpowder mealed by treating it with spirits of wine, and which when lit burned steadily like a large Roman candle at the rate of an inch a minute.

On Edwards' right were a pair of scissors, a brass pricker looking like a large darning needle stuck into a wooden handle, two square of soft leather, a ball of marline (the light tar on the line mingled curiously with the cobbler's shop smell of the leather) and a chunk of pitch chipped from a large piece, black and shiny like coal but already beginning to dull and soften slightly in the sun, and a battered saucepan in which to heat it.

Three men stood round the gunner's mate holding leather buckets of water and each with strict orders to douse the powder-filled barrels at a word from Edwards, who picked up one of the pieces of leather and, standing a portfire on it, marked out the circular shape of its base using the tip of the brass pricker. He cut out the circle with the scissors and then with the same preoccupied air of a schoolboy pushing a pencil through a square of paper, slipped the portfire into the hole, making sure it was a tight fit.