There was something very impressive about a ship of the line running dead before the wind: ahead of her the waves swept on in regular formation while she, her sails straining in elegant curves, seemed to curtsey as her stern lifted to a swell wave, her stem sliced up a sparkling bow wave and the whole ship seemed to rise with a massive eagerness until, the swell wave passing under her, she slowed and the whole process began again with the next wave.
And she was hoisting a lot of flags!
'Hoist our pendant numbers,' Ramage snapped, 'and stand by to answer some signals!'
Orsini now had Martin's telescope because he was responsible for signals.
'Well?' Ramage asked impatiently.
'I - I'm not sure, sir. Do we have the old signal book, sir?'
'Of course not. Why?'
'I think she's making an old challenge!'
'Rubbish! You'll say she's hoisted the private signal in a moment!'
'I think she has, sir,' Orsini turned to Ramage. 'My memory is not good, sir, but I'm sure that's one of the challenges for last July, and one of the sequence of private signals also for July. If she -'
Aitken interrupted, a note of urgency in his voice: 'Sir, if you don't have the latest challenges and private signals, you use - in wartime - the ones for the same day but two months earlier!'
'We don't have the replies,' Ramage said, thinking aloud. 'All the books were returned to the Admiralty when the Treaty was signed.'
Suddenly he felt chilled and swung his telescope to his eye again.
The Invincible was furling her royals and courses; in a few moments she would be sailing under topsails alone, the canvas for fighting. At that moment the Invincible's starboard side, which he could see most clearly, had changed: the curving black tumblehome with its single white strake, greyed with dried salt, now had two gashes running parallel above and below the white strake: two dull red gashes where her gunports had suddenly been opened. And now, like ragged black fingers, her guns were being run out.
'She doesn't know the war is over!' Ramage exclaimed.
'And as far as she's concerned, we're a French frigate flying false colours and not answering the challenge,' Aitken said.
'Senta,' Orsini murmured, 'siamo amici;listen, we are friends.'
For a moment Ramage stared at the approaching ship. Impressive, terrifying, majestic, irresistible . . . she was all of these things; he had the same view of her that a frog in a pond would have of an approaching swan. The Calypso's magazine was still locked, the portlids still down, Bowen's surgical instruments stored in their chest - there was no war on, and the Invincible was British. In the Invincible, though, all her guns - 32-pounders on the lowerdeck, 24-pounders on the maindeck, and 12-pounders and carronades on the upperdeck - were loaded and run out; the locks were fitted, the gun captains would be holding the trigger lanyards, crouched beyond the reach of the recoil, and the second captains would be waiting the word to cock the locks; the Invincible's decks would be wet and covered with sand to prevent men slipping and soak up any spilled powder. The captain at this very moment must be preparing to luff up or bear away to bring one or other broadside to bear. And he must be surprised that the captain of the apparent French frigate had a strong enough nerve to trust his bluff with the false colours. One broadside from the Invincible, well aimed (as it must be, in such a comparatively calm sea, and the first broadside was usually the decisive one), would destroy the Calypso.
How, then, to prevent the Invincible from firing it?
Surprise... surprise... surprise... The word, which he had so often dinned into his officers, echoed like a flat note repeated on a pianoforte. How on earth did one surprise a 74-gun ship which was bearing down from to windward of an unprepared frigate, guns loaded and run out?
She was now barely half a mile away: as she rolled he could see black rectangles below the waterline where twenty or thirty sheets of copper sheathing were missing; the boats stowed on the booms were newly painted. The stitching of a seam was just beginning to go in the foretopsail; in ten minutes they would have to furl the sail for repairs - but ten minutes would be too late for the Calypso as she stretched along on the starboard tack. In a few minutes there would be roundshot as well as wind coming over the starboard side.
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.