A glance forward showed the Calypso and the Calypsos utterly unprepared: forty or fifty men were standing by the bulwark, watching the ship of the line bearing down on them, but in the last moment or two they had realized the significance of the opened gunports. Aitken, Wagstaffe, Kenton, Southwick, Orsini, the Marine Renwick and even the surgeon Bowen, on the quarterdeck to watch the Invincible pass, and Martin on watch, stood as though paralysed: in a few minutes not one would be left alive; they would all be cut down by a hail of round and grapeshot.
Surprise: the unexpected: what could stop the Invincible's broadsides? A sudden threat - but to what? Her masts and rigging . . . her bowsprit and jibboom?
'Ready ho, Mr Martin,' Ramage suddenly bellowed, his voice carrying across the ship and turning every seaman's face up to the quarterdeck eagerly awaiting the order that might save their lives. 'Orsini, a white sheet!' There would be no time to do anything with it, but... He continued the sail orders. 'Put the helm down!... Quartermaster, the helm's a'lee, eh? Right, now men, raise tacks and sheets!'
To a stranger, the Calypso's decks were chaos, with men running, hauling on ropes, glancing up at the trim of a sail, easing a sheet, hauling on a tack, hardening in a brace.
Ramage saw the Invincible appear to slide across from the Calypso's starboard bow to her larboard; overhead canvas flogged as sails lost the wind. The frigate steadied as the quartermaster repeated a helm order from Martin.
The after sails had lifted, then he could see the wind was out of them. 'Maintop bowline - haul it well taut...' Now the bow had passed through the eye of the wind. 'Mainsail haul! Step lively men!' Ramage's throat was already sore and Southwick handed him the speaking-trumpet.
Already, crashing and bumping as the wind filled the sails with a bang on the new tack, jerking yards and making ropes whiplash, the Calypso was beginning to pay off.
'Foretacks and head bowlines . . . haul taut!'
The Calypso was coming alive in the water again; he could hear the spilling water sound of her bow wave. The Invincible was - damnation, she was just abaft the Calypso's beam and although still racing along she was simply turning a few degrees to bring her larboard broadside to bear, instead of her starboard. The Calypso had tacked too quickly. Very well!
'Ready ho!' Ramage bawled into the speaking-trumpet. 'Put the helm down!'
He saw the men spinning the wheel the other way again, ready to turn the Calypso back in the direction from which she had just come.
'The helm's a'lee! Keep the foretopsail backed, men!'
The frigate swung back through the wind's eye so that the Invincible was almost ahead again.
'Put the helm up!' Ramage roared. 'That's it, hold her there hove-to!'
Hurriedly he trimmed the main and mizen sails. The foretopsail had the wind blowing on its forward side, pressing sail and yard against the mast and trying to push the Calypso's bow round to larboard, but the aftersails, trimmed normally, were trying to push the bow to starboard.
Ramage gave a few more orders - bracing the foretopsail yard until it was sharp up, easing the helm slightly, letting fly one of the jibs - until the thrust trying to force the Calypso's bow to larboard exactly equalled the thrust on the after sails trying to push it to starboard. Then the frigate was stopped, balanced on the water like a gull, all her sails set but none of them moving her.
Then he prepared to look round at the Invincible. Southwick, Aitken, and all the others in the ship not busy with heaving-to the frigate were already staring at her, and Ramage knew he had probably failed: first he had tacked the Calypso too quickly, giving the ship of the line plenty of time to bring her other broadside to bear; then he had taken too long to heave-to the frigate on the other tack: instead of stopping the Calypso a few ship's lengths in front of the Invincible, forcing the great ship into some violent manoeuvre to avoid ramming the frigate and probably sending at least her foremast by the board, it seemed he had left her just room to dodge and fire a raking broadside as she passed.
The distant rolling like thunder finally spurred Ramage to look: he was sure it was the rumble of broadsides but he could not believe that the Invincible could be so far away.
Not guns, he realized, but flogging canvas: faced with the Calypso suddenly heaving-to, the only way the Invincible could avoid a collision was to put her helm hard over and now, as she swung round, not fifty yards from the Calypso's bow, every sail in the ship was flogging, the foretopsail ripping from head to foot.
And the muzzle of every gun in the Invincible's starboard broadside was pointing right at the Calypso. The Invincible was swinging fast and Ramage saw a group of officers on her quarterdeck staring across at the frigate. Then he saw they were in fact staring at Orsini, who was standing on the hammock nettings slowly waving a white sheet.
Suddenly and quite unaccountably angry at the group of men, Ramage ran to the bulwark and climbed up on to the nettings to windward of Orsini. He put the speaking trumpet to his mouth and screamed: 'British ship! The war's over, you numskulls!'
He swung the speaking-trumpet forward. 'Come on, men, sing! "Black-eyed Susan!"'
A moment later he was leading two hundred men as they bellowed the words which echoed across the sea to the Invincible, gradually bearing away now as she cleared the Calypso and slowly trimmed her sails.
'You can stow that sheet now,' he said to Paolo. 'Where on earth did you manage to find it so quickly?'
Paolo grinned as he folded it. 'Your cabin was nearest, sir; it's from your cot! I'm afraid I tore it as I climbed up on the nettings.'
'Did you, by Jove,' Ramage said, for the moment finding his knees weak. Knowing that the strain was easing he wanted to giggle, and Paolo's apology, coming moments after the boy's signals had probably done more than anything to save the ship, could be enough to start him off.
CHAPTER NINE
'Look here, Ramage, I distinctly heard you call me a "numskull",' Captain William Hamilton protested querulously in a broad Scots voice. ' "Numskull", you shouted, and every one of my officers heard you, too.'
'Yes, sir, and I apologize: I was in a hurry when I spoke.'
'I should think you were,' Hamilton said, slightly mollified, and subsided into a chair, his lips drawn back to expose his teeth, reminding Ramage of a hissing snake. His complexion was purplish, his face narrow and the flesh sunken.
'I am twenty-eighth on the post list but you, Ramage, who aren't even named in my copy of the List, regard me as a "numskull".'
'I've already apologized, sir: it was said in the heat of the moment. Now, sir, I must inform you that the war is over; we have signed a Treaty with Bonaparte and -'
'Silence!' roared Hamilton, half rising from his chair. 'I won't listen to such nonsense! Here I have a man claiming to be a post captain, but whose name is not in my Navy List, coming on board from a French-built frigate and telling me that Mr Pitt has signed a Treaty with the enemy! Why -'
'I've been posted a year, sir; you have been in Indian waters a long time.'
'And we all know captains serving in Indian waters for any length of time go off their heads, don't we, eh Ramage?'
The man's voice took on a slightly hysterical note, rising at the end of each sentence and emphasizing his Scots accent. Lowland Scots, Aitken would pronounce with all the contempt of a Highlander.