Finally it was dark enough to get under way, but as he gave the order Ramage felt nervousness sweeping over him, like a chill from a sudden cold breeze.
In the darkness the sea, the boat and even Ramage's own body, seemed remote. To seaward it was impossible to see where horizon ended and night sky began, despite the glittering stars and the light from the sharply etched moon, which had just risen over the mainland. The boat seemed to be gliding along like a gull, suspended between sea and sky.
Ramage found it hard to believe the crazy attempt he was making with seven men in a small boat was reality. Was this gig supposed to be a suitable substitute for a frigate to rescue men of great political influence so that they could rally their people to carry on — start, in some cases — a war against Bonaparte?
Was Ramage himself a suitable substitute for a post captain, welcoming them on board amid grandiose assurances for their future? Was he the man to inspire and overawe them with Britain's sea power in the Mediterranean? The whole situation was either tragic or ludicrous.
Jackson's lean face, dancing with strange shadows as he lifted the canvas shade of the lantern to glance at the compass, brought Ramage's thoughts back to the immediate present. He noticed Jackson was going bald: the sandy-coloured hair was receding... in the darkness the American's head reminded him of the rounded low-lying rocks of the Formiche de Burano, which they had passed an hour ago.
If his estimate of the current was correct, they were less than a mile from the beach and it was time to get rid of the Admiral's orders and the secret signal book - in fact everything but the charts - since the chances of capture were increasing rapidly.
He gave instructions to Jackson, then spoke to the seamen. Should he and Jackson be caught or killed it would be criminal to leave the seamen in ignorance of their position.
‘You all saw the Tower through the glass this morning,' he told them. 'There's a small stream just south of it, and we may be able to hide the boat there. Jackson and I will try to find these people, and it may take the rest of the night. If we haven't returned by sunset tomorrow - that's Saturday - you'll leave in the boat at nightfall and make your way to a point five miles north of Giglio, where a frigate should be there to meet you at dawn on Sunday and again on Monday. If it doesn't turn up, you'll have to make for Bastia.'
A splash near by showed Jackson had flung the weighted canvas bag overboard, and Ramage told him to go forward with the lead line - the American had fashioned one from a length of marline and a smooth, heavy pebble - ready to give a cast.
Ramage took the tiller. "Right men: steady strokes and no noise: give way together.'
The boat's erratic rolling and pitching stopped as the blades of the oars bit and thrust it ahead once again; the tiller came to life as the water surged past the rudder and bubbled away astern, talking to itself.
They were lucky it was calm: a wind with any west or south in it - a maestrale libeccio or scirocco, for instance - whipped up such a sea along this coast that beaching the boat or getting into the river would be impossible. And the same went for launching again afterwards: any of these winds, which often came up suddenly with little or no warning, could maroon them on shore for several days, so that they would miss the frigate off Giglio.
'A cast, Jackson.'
'Two fathoms, sir.'
The beach was now very close. The noise on board a ship or boat was usually sharp and clear, not muffled by echoes and deadened by trees or buildings; but now the creak of the gig and the slop of the sea were becoming overladen with the faint - for the moment - mechanical buzzing of thousands of cicadas and the squawks, barks and grunts of wild animals and birds. The heavy yet astringent, austere resin smell of the juniper and pines, floating seaward like an invisible fog, permeated everything, its sharpness emphasized for Ramage because for years he had been accustomed to the ever-present, sickly odours of sweat, reeking bilges, tarred rope, damp wood and damp clothing.
The dark green pines - their smell was as sharp in the nostrils as burnt gunpowder and as unforgettable. It was odd how smell, much more than sight or sound, brought back memories. What could he remember best of the years in Tuscany? The pines, larches and cicadas, of course; and the white dust clouds trailing behind carriages; the dark and heavy green of the cypress trees growing narrow and pointed, jutting up along the side of a hill like boarding pikes stowed in racks. He particularly remembered the sharp contrast between the deep green of pine and cypress, with their sturdy solidity which no wind could ruffle, and the silver-green scattering of leaves which seemed too young, too fluttering, to grow from the tortured, twisted olive trunks. And the creamy-skinned oxen with their huge horns, so massive and so gentle; he could picture their steady plodding, a pair always working together, so accustomed to leaning in towards each other that they could never be changed round. And the poverty of the peasants, the contadini, who lived like the slaves he had seen labouring in the plantations in the West Indies, but who were in many ways worse off, because a plantation owner who had paid several pounds a head for slaves was careful to keep them alive, while the Tuscan peasants, breeding and dying like flies, were free labour for the landowners....
'Another cast, Jackson.'
'Fathom and a half, sir.'
In a few minutes, Ramage thought, he would be on Tuscan soil. Was it Tuscan, though? Or did the King of Naples' enclave stretch as far south as this? What a patchwork quilt Italy was: a dozen or so small, self-centred states, kingdoms, princedoms, dukedoms or republics, each jealous of the other, each a centre of intrigue and villainy, where politicians made more use of an assassin's dagger than a vote in council. They'd long since learned that sharpened steel always beat logic.
'Jackson!'
'A fathom, sir.'
Yes, he could see the beach now: the little wavelets were reflecting in the moonlight as they danced towards the shore and sprawled on the sand. He heard a buzzing round his head: they'd all provide a feast for the mosquitoes which made life a misery in this area. And he only hoped none of the men would pick up the ague which was part of the normal life on the marshy Maremma, the flat plain stretching from here down to Rome and beyond.
'Five feet, sir.'
The water was shoaling fast and the beach was perhaps fifty yards away. The cicadas were making the night ring, sounding like the ticking of a million clocks; and occasionally a frog gave a hoarse croak, as if complaining about the cicadas. From farther inland he heard a series of deep grunts: a wild boar grouting around under the pines and cork oaks.
Where the devil was the Tower? The narrow strip of sandy beach was clear enough, and he could make out the dunes behind, topped by a dark band formed of masses of juniper bushes and rock roses, and the thick carpet-like plant sprouting thousands of podgy green fingers - what did they call it? some odd name: fico degli Ottentoti, fig of the Hottentots.
'My boy,' his mother had said when he was much younger, 'you must go back to Italy one day when you are older; old enough to understand and judge her.' And now he was doing just that; though his mother's judgement was that of a woman born into a family which for centuries had wielded power and influence, and a friend of several similar families in Italy who had seen their rights and power usurped and, in their view, anyway, wrongly used by upstarts and degenerate, half-witted Hapsburg or Bourbon second sons, with a following of Austrians and Spanish grandees who had been given estates in Italy to get them out of the way. Or they had seen their land given away as a king's payment to a temporary mistress's family. Worse still, they had seen their own and Church lands fall into the clutches of papal princelings, the bastard offspring of ostensibly celibate popes who had been born of broken sacred vows, made noble by the twitch of the same popes' bejewelled little fingers, and given vast estates: a nobility created from deceitful lust and made rich by corruption.