At that moment a seaman came up to report the captain's oil lamp was lit, and went away with the pitch and saucepan with orders to start heating it. 'Just runny,' Edwards said, 'don't let it start bubbling.'
With a warning glance at the men standing round, Edwards gently drew the bung from the barrel, carefully folding the cloth in which it had been wrapped so that none of the slate-grey grains of powder still adhering to it should fall on the deck, and handing it to one of the men to drop in a bucket. Then he worked the piece of leather with the hole in it into the bung-hole, flattening it out with his fingers inside the barrel and over the top of the powder to act as a washer so that it covered the powder except for the hole he had cut out.
He worked his index finger in the powder until he made a cavity three inches deep, picked up the portfire and pushed it through the leather washer and into the powder until the portfire stuck up out of the bung-hole like a candle on a cake. Taking up the roll of marline he tucked an end between the leather and the inside of the barrel and began to wind it round and round the base of the portfire, as though rewinding a cotton reel, pausing every now and again to push it down until the portfire was a tight fit in the bung-hole, and leaving a shallow depression all round.
He called for the hot pitch and the seaman came running from the fo'c'sle with the old saucepan. Edwards inspected the pitch in case it was too hot, then gently poured some on to the marline wound round the portfire in the bung-hole, filling up the circular depression. He then wound on more turns of marline, pushing them down with the pricker, and poured on more pitch, using the pricker to shape it so that when it set there would be a little mountain of pitch stuck up on the barrel with the portfire sticking out in place of a peak. He inspected it carefully, waiting for the pitch to cool, then gently pressed the portfire. It was firmly seated.
Motioning to the man to take the pitch back to the lamp and keep it hot, and telling another to hold the completed barrel, he then set to work repeating the whole operation with the second one. He had just finished when Southwick came bustling up.
'Well, Edwards, have y' got those boxes of fireworks ready yet? The cartridges are stowed in the boat the way you said, and the boat cover's rigged and ready to be secured. We haven't much time left y'know. Look!'
Edwards glanced up and was startled to see how near was the frigate. He ordered the barrels to be carried aft. 'Handle 'em gently,' he warned the men. 'If you knock those portfires I'll personally dry your corpses in the sun and sell the meat to the Dons as prime jerked beef.'
The tone of his voice warned them he was only just joking, and as soon as they were by the taffrail, holding the barrels as though they were glass, Ramage walked over and carefully inspected each one.
'You've done a good job, Edwards. Let's hope the portfires burn true. You'll see the boat cover's rigged so that once you've lit the portfires and got from under it, that line has only to be drawn taut and belayed and the cover's snugged well down. Don't rush things when I give the word, but remember that even if the portfires burn the full fifteen minutes, we can't afford to lose a moment from the time you light them.'
'Aye aye, sir,' said Edwards and climbed up on to the taffrail and out to the boat slung in the davits. 'You,' he said to a seaman, 'come and give me a hand in here.'
The two men almost disappeared under the canvas cover and then took the first barrel as it was handed to them. Edwards lifted out some of the stacked cartridges to make two separate gaps for the barrels to be wedged in. As soon as he had fitted them he put a square of canvas over each one, the portfire sticking up through a slit in the centre. The canvas was thick enough to protect the flannel of the cartridge bags from the sparks thrown out by the sputterings of the portfires. He told the seaman to get back on board and crawled to the opening in the boat cover.
'Ready now, sir.'"
'Very well, but you might as well stay there for a few minutes,' Ramage said, and turned to look once again at the frigate.
Although the curvature of the earth just hid the waterline - indicating she was still more than four miles away - her roll was so violent he frequently glimpsed the copper sheathing on her bottom. His telescope clearly showed the discoloured reddish-yellow of the metal and Ramage noted there was no green streak of weed or patches of barnacles. That told him a great deal - the frigate had been docked in the last month or two and, more important, since Spain came into the war only a few weeks ago, was almost certainly newly-commissioned with a raw crew and probably unseasoned officers and captain as well, if ships were being rushed into commission. And even trained guns' crews would be hard put to hit anything from a ship rolling like that - anyone peering along the barrel of a gun would sight the sea a hundred yards away one moment and the blue sky the next, the horizon flashing past in a split second.
For a few moments he pictured the Kathleen with the explosive 'red herring' towing astern at the end of the floating grass rope. For the demonstration, time was not so important. But if his bluff was called and he had to try to sink her, the boat must be in position under the Spaniard's stern just as the portfires exploded the powder; a minute too soon and the Spaniards would have time to drop round shot through its bottom. A minute too late might not be so disastrous: much of the explosive effect would be lost, but it'd probably be enough to start some planks. How about musket fire? Well, it'd take a lot to sink the boat or make it leak enough to spoil all the powder. What were the snags then? It was late in the day to start thinking of them, but why hadn't anyone used an explosion boat before? After all, fireships had been used against the Armada ...
Would powder exploding in an unconfined space do much damage? Well if he didn't know, presumably the Spanish didn't either; but since the first boat was bound to make a splendid firework display the Spaniards, as the potential victims of a second one, would be more nervous than he was. And in his experience the bigger the bang the more frightening the weapons, irrespective of the damage - which was why he'd been training the Kathleens to avoid shouting unnecessarily when working the guns, but scream like madmen if they ever had to board an enemy ship or repel boarders.
But whatever the effect of the explosion boat, Ramage thought inconsequentially, one thing was certain: afterwards the gunner's mate would need a certificate signed by him to send to the Board of Ordnance explaining why so much powder had been used up in such a short time ... And he visualized the letter he'd probably receive later from the Admiralty expressing Their Lordships' 'displeasure', the result of a peevish protest from the Ordnance Board. Bureaucrats thrived on war - to them the smoke of battle transmuted itself into hundreds of orderly piles of forms and certificates, affidavits and letters, neatly tied with the familiar pink tape, and men killed in battle were swiftly disposed of by two strokes of a pen - simply a two-letter entry against each name, 'dd', the official abbreviation for 'Discharged Dead'.
Realizing he was rubbing his forehead again, Ramage turned away.
'Mr. Southwick, make sure the jolly boat is ready to be hoisted out, and have a white cloth lashed to a boarding pike as a flag of truce. And I'll have all the guns loaded, if you please.'