The Bosun hauled the cutter up to the launch's transom and scrambled on board, followed by the Carpenter's Mate and Wilson. As the three men sat waiting in the darkness, Ramage would have given a lot to know their thoughts....
'I've opened the Captain's orders and propose carrying them out...'
He tended to have difficulty in pronouncing the letter 'r' when he became excited: the faint hint of 'pwopose' warned him to keep calm.
'I shall take Jackson and six men in the gig. Bosun, you'll transfer to the launch, and Wilson can take over your cutter.
'Bosun, you'll be in command of the three boats.'
Damned difficult giving orders to men in the dark when you couldn't see their faces.
'You will take them to Bastia, in Corsica.'
'But it's—'
'A long way: over seventy miles, but it's the nearest place where you'll find any British ships, and as you know the Corsican coast, you won't get lost. Take the muster book and master's log. When you arrive, report to the senior British naval officer, giving him a full account of what has happened and — now listen carefully, this is most important - ask him to communicate to Sir John Jervis at once that Lieutenant Ramage is proceeding in execution of Sir John's orders concerning the Sibella. Also request him to send a ship to rendezvous with me five miles off the north end of Giglio at dawn on Sunday and, if I'm not there, again at dawn on Monday.
'If you are unlucky enough to get caught by the French on the way, throw the log over the side, and at all costs convince them you are the only survivors from the Sibella. Don't mention me or the gig. Now—'
Swiftly he settled the details of the courses the Bosun was to steer. He remembered to ask if any of the boats had wine on board and found the Carpenter's Mate's boat had a barrel, which he was ordered to empty over the side. His protests were met with a curt, 'Can you guarantee to control a couple of dozen drunken men?'
After telling the Bosun to send the six best men over to the gig, Ramage shook hands with the three men in the darkness, and prepared to scramble over the boats to join his latest command. This, he thought to himself, must be a record - to have held the command of a frigate, a launch, and finally a gig, all in the space of an hour.
Just before ordering the other three boats away, Ramage remembered to gather them round and, to back up the Bosun's authority, warned all the seamen that they were still governed by the Articles of War. They listened in silence broken only by the slapping of the water against the sides of the boats and the occasional scraping as one or other of the boats fended off.
Then, to Ramage's surprise, just as he was about to tell the Bosun to carry on, one of the seamen called out in a low voice, 'Three cheers for 'is Lordship - 'ip, 'ip ... oorayl' The men had kept their voices low; yet he sensed the emotion in their voices. He was so startled - both by the unexpected cheers and the significant use of his title — that he was groping for a suitable reply when several of the men called across, 'Good luck, sir!' which allowed him to respond with a gruff, 'Thank you, lads: now bend your backs; you've a long way to go-'
With that he sat down in the stern sheets, took the tiller and waited for the other boats to get clear before setting the gig's crew to work at the oars.
Glancing over towards Argentario he saw a faint, silvery glow below the horizon which was just beginning to dim some of the stars: the moon was rising behind the mountains, and a few minutes later he could distinguish the faces of the men sitting on the nearest thwarts, and noticed they were shiny with perspiration.
Well, he told himself, there are fewer worries in commanding a gig twenty-four feet long and weighing about thirteen hundredweight than a frigate of 150 feet displacing nearly seven hundred tons: less comfortable though, he thought, easing himself round so that the transom knee did not dig into his hip.
As the moon, a great oyster-pink orb, rose from behind Argentario it sharpened the silhouetted peaks of the mountains. They were, he mused, comfortable mountains with the peaks and ridges well rounded, compared with the jagged, tooth-edged Alps: more like gargantuan ant-hills. But as the moon climbed higher, shortening the shadows, the silhouette faded, and the whole of Argentario was tinted in a warm, silvery-pink light. A silver light on Monte Argentario ... Why was it named the Silver Mountain? Was silver ever mined there? Surely not. Perhaps the wind ruffling the leaves of the olive trees made it look silvery in daylight - he remembered noticing their foliage sometimes gave that effect to a hillside.
Now he could see all the men in the gig and recognized them as topmen: the Bosun had given him the survivors of the finest seamen in the Sibella: the men who reefed or furled aloft high up and out on the yards.
In the moonlight, unshaven and raggedly dressed, they looked more like the crew of a privateer's boat than King's men, and privateersmen were as bad as pirates - worse, in fact, since they usually served on a shares-in-the-prize basis, which made them much more cruel and daring than pirates, whose rewards depended on the whim of their captain.
One of the men on the nearest thwart, naked from the waist up, a rag round his brow to stop the perspiration running into his eyes, and his hair tied in a pigtail, still had his face begrimed with smoke from the guns. Why the devil didn't I tell them to put some hammocks in the boats? thought Ramage: even though they are tanned, a day half stripped under a hot sun will scorch their skin and exhaust them more than a spell at the oars, apart from an increasing thirst.
That man rowing stroke - wasn't his face streaked with blood?
'You - stroke! Have you been hurt?'
'It's nothing, sir: just a cut on the forehead. Why, is me face bloody?'
'Looks it from here.'
They were an extraordinary bunch: give them the slightest opportunity to shirk a job and they'll seize it, he thought. Give the majority of them a chance to desert and they will, even though they risk death, or the certainty of a flogging round the fleet. But in battle they are new men: the shirker, the drunkard, the fool - all become fighting demons. In an emergency each has the strength of two men. Even now, after half a day's bitter battle, they'll haul on their oars, if necessary, until they drop from exhaustion. Yet if there was a cask of wine in the boat and he went to sleep, he'd find them all blind drunk when he woke.
They were like children in many ways, and even though several of the Sibellas were old enough to be his father, he was always conscious of their basic simplicity: their sudden childlike enthusiasms, waywardness, lack of responsibility and unpredictability.
Dreaming again, Ramage ... He decided to let them rest while he gave them a word or two about their task.
'Well, men, you may be curious to know where we are going - if you haven't already heard at the scuttle butt ...'
This raised a laugh: many an officer first heard details of his captain's secret orders by way of the scuttle butt, which was the tub of water placed on deck, guarded by a Marine sentry, and from which the men could drink at set times during the day. There the day's gossip was exchanged, and although the route the news travelled from the cabin to the scuttle butt was often devious, the news itself was nearly always accurate. A captain's steward's eyes and ears rarely missed anything, and a lowly captain's writer - virtually a clerk - became someone of importance among his shipmates only if he had some information to pass on.