Ramage and the Renegades

Paolo snatched the telescope from the binnacle drawer and adjusted the focus. 'Yes, sir! She's drifting! Some men are cutting the gaskets on her mainsail!'

Southwick was standing beside the chair. 'I took us too close that time, sir,' he said apologetically. 'The gun captains complain we passed the Lynx too fast. They want us about fifty yards off.'

'You'll have to bear away: they've cut their cable and are drifting.'

Southwick peered ahead and gave a helm order to Jackson and at almost the same moment Ramage heard the groan of the tiller ropes rendering round the barrel of the wheel as the helmsmen pulled at the spokes.

'She's not drifting fast,' the master commented. 'Half a knot; perhaps a little more.'

The trouble was, every yard of drift to leeward took the privateer towards the cliffs which ran in a curve round to the headland to the southwest. That section of the bay had not been surveyed yet. The Calypso could very easily slam into a reef, or even a single rock, that the Lynx with her much shallower draught could pass over without noticing it.

'You'd better have a man ready with the lead,' Ramage said to Southwick, who sniffed.

'He's standing by, sir, but the muzzle blast from the guns could bowl him over.'

Ramage bit off a sarcastic retort: the Lynx was turning slightly to starboard as she drifted. In a few moments she would be in the sights of the first gun on the larboard side.

'Orsini! Tell Mr Wagstaffe to load the guns on the starboard side with roundshot. Use roundshot in all guns after the larboard guns have fired.'

Southwick looked round, having heard the instruction. 'Aye, sir, the grapeshot is just pecking at her!'

But the master was wrong. 'Don't judge it by what you see on the transom!' Just imagine all that grape sweeping through the ship from stern to bow. Cutting the beggars down in swathes!'

The second and third guns fired almost simultaneously, followed by the fourth, fifth and sixth. The longer range - fifty yards, perhaps a little more - gave the gun captains more time to adjust the elevation. The training would stay the same, about at right-angles to the Calypso's centreline, and each gun captain would tug on his trigger line, attached to the flintlock, as the Lynx slid from forward aft across his field of view.

Now the smoke was pouring aft and rising over the quarterdeck. He held his breath, then tried to breathe shallowly, but in a few moments he was gasping and then coughing and once again it felt as though his left arm would burst under the jabs of a sharp knife.

A heavy double thud almost beside him warned that the last two guns had fired and Southwick, yelling 'That's it; round we go again!', began shouting into the speaking-trumpet to wear the frigate. Ramage saw a pall of dust lying over the privateer, the surest sign that the shot were tearing into the wood and slowly ripping the ship apart.

Again sails slatted; the yards creaked and rope rattled the sheaves of the blocks as the Calypso seemed to spin and back almost in her original wake, only this time with her starboard guns slowly coming to bear. The first half dozen had fired when suddenly Ramage saw a huge ball of flame and felt, rather than heard, a roaring blast, and everything went black.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Southwick was sitting in the chair by his cot. Ramage's arm felt as though the point of a cutlass blade was still embedded in it. But his right leg - the lower part felt heavy. And painful - especially when he tried to move his foot.

'Good evening, sir,' Southwick said and sniffed. A relieved sniff, Ramage noticed through a haze made up of dizziness, pain - and, he was surprised to discover, hunger.

'Keep absolutely still, sir, while I pass the word for Bowen. He's been very busy.'

Busy - the word chilled Ramage. 'Wait -' the word came out as a croak: his throat was sore. 'Have we lost a lot of men? What happened? All that flame -'

'Easy, sir,' Southwick said reassuringly, pushing Ramage back in the cot. 'Only two men dead, but twenty or more wounded.'

'Oh God.' So he had failed. It had looked so simple. It was so simple. Get the Calypso under way and tack and wear across the Lynx's stern firing raking broadsides until she surrendered. They were firing the third when there was that dreadful flash.

'Let me pass the word for Bowen, sir.' The master went to the door and spoke to the Marine sentry, and when he came back he said, almost accusingly: 'You've lost a lot more blood again. No one realized the quarterdeck had caught it.'

'Why?' Ramage hardly recognized the noise that came out when he spoke.

'Well, young Orsini and I were over the side in the sea, Jackson was unconscious and the two men at the wheel were dead.'

'What were you doing ... in the sea?' His head was spinning; he was spiralling down and down as though caught in a whirlpool, and night had fallen before he came round again, to find Southwick dozing in an armchair, the sleeping cabin lit by a lantern.

His brain was muddled. He had dreamed that Southwick had been swimming in the sea with Orsini. Curiously enough the master's hair was plastered down on his head, as though still damp and sticky from salt water.

Southwick saw that Ramage's eyes were open and jumped up at once to kneel beside the cot.

'Before you pass out again, sir, Bowen wants to know if you're warm enough, thirsty or hungry.'

'Thirsty,' Ramage said, and then repeated it, trying out his voice and finding it was still hoarse but nearer normal. 'Hot soup.'

Then he remembered something. Not only had he dreamed Southwick and Orsini were swimming together, but there was talk of him losing a lot of men. And what was he doing here in his cot anyway?

'What happened?'

Southwick sniffed - had he not just done that? 'You get a warm drink inside you and some food, and I'll tell you what I know. Mr Wagstaffe's in no state to talk at the moment, no more is Jackson, and the other officers weren't on board: they only saw it from the shore...'

'But that terrible flash . . .'

'Yes, yes, sir,' Southwick said soothingly, 'all in good time. Bowen is most anxious you don't get excited.'

'Excited!' Ramage grumbled wearily. 'How can I help it when you won't tell me anything?'

Southwick finally caught the despair in his captain's voice and as he walked to the door to talk to the sentry said over his shoulder: 'Don't you worry, sir. There's nothing to worry about.'

When the master came back, having ordered hot soup, he found Ramage propped up on his right elbow, a wild look in his eye, his hair matted and filled with dust. 'The Earl of Dodsworth,' he muttered, 'something happened to her!'

Southwick looked puzzled. 'She's all right, sir. The hostages were a bit startled, I expect, but that's all.'

'And the rest of the hostages?'

'They're quite safe, sir. There's nothing to worry about. Once you've a pint of hot soup inside you, I'll tell you all I know. And Bowen will be here in a few minutes for a chat about that leg of yours.'

Leg, for God's sake. An arm and a leg. Anything, it seemed, to prevent him getting over to the Earl of Dodsworth. Not that he had any excuse to go over, he told himself. She would have seen the attack and whatever happened next. At the moment she probably knew more than he did.

The sentry's hail told him that Bowen was coming, and even by the dim light of the lantern Ramage could see that the surgeon was exhausted.

'What happened?' Ramage asked. 'Southwick won't tell me a damn thing. Why did we have so many casualties? We oughtn't to have lost a man. Was it because I was knocked out? Did -'

He was running the words together, almost as though he was drunk, and Bowen knelt beside the cot and without answering motioned to Southwick to bring the lantern. Then he pushed up one of Ramage's eyelids, inspected the eyeball for a few moments and then felt the pulse in his right wrist.