'A good job we found La Robuste,' Aitken said, 'Otherwise ...'
'Otherwise we'd have looked very stupid,' Ramage completed. 'Right, we start at Pointe Charlotte. The coast is low and sandy, plenty of mangroves up to the high-water-mark, occasional clumps of trees behind, and isolated rocks sitting in the mud to seaward.
'By a stroke of luck, or just the kindness of nature, there is a high, cone-shaped hill nine miles inland: on a clear day you can see it for twenty miles, so you don't have to rely on the mangroves for a landfall.
'Right, now we get to it. The coast is trending west-northwest when you reach Pointe Charlotte, which is three miles northwest of the Kourou river, which is marked by three small mountains "all remarkable objects at a long distance, and good guides for the entrance to the river".
'To distinguish Pointe Charlotte from a thousand other points, it has some rocks at its base,' Ramage said ironically. 'Of more interest to us, though: if you stand on Pointe Charlotte and stare out across the Atlantic, hoping perhaps to see Africa, you'll see instead "a group of three small rocky islets", and they are small, occupying a space of about half a mile.
'As far as I can understand from this pilot, the island farthest out in the Atlantic is the northernmost, Île du Diable, 131 feet high; the one on your left is the largest and highest, Île Royale, 216 feet; and to the right is the nearest, the southernmost, and the smallest, Île St Joseph.'
'Which is the one we're particularly interested in?' Aitken asked.
'I think Île du Diable, or Devil's Island, and the blasted pilot simply says it is forbidden to land on any of the islands without the written permission of the préfet at Cayenne because St Joseph and Royale are "convict settlements" while Diable is a settlement for "détenus", which I'm sure means "prisoners" but not people who have actually been convicted, although I'll check it with Gilbert because he knows better than I the finer shades of meaning in Revolutionary France.'
'What about anchorages?' Aitken asked. Captains concerned themselves with tactics, first lieutenants worried about anchorages.
'The pilot makes a great song and dance that the lee of the islands provides the only sheltered anchorage along the coast - otherwise you have to go up one of the big rivers. Yes, here we are - five cables southwest of the western end of Royale, soft mud, five fathoms, well sheltered from easterly winds. Ah, Royale seems to be the headquarters - it has a fort guarding it to seaward, a church on the hill, and a jetty on the south side. Diable - well, that has only "a fortified enclosure" for the détenus. St Joseph: a poor anchorage a cable to the south in hard mud - that is all it has to offer the world...'
'Are there any rocks and shoals?'
'Plenty,' Ramage said, 'and too many to mention. The positions this pilot gives are too vague to be of much use. Hmm ... "generally, a vessel coming in sight of the fort on Île Royale will result one hour later in a canoe with a local pilot waiting close under the northwest corner of Île du Diable ..." He'll guide you to the recommended anchorage I've just mentioned southwest of Île Royale.'
Ramage closed the book. 'That's all it says about the Îles du Salut. More important, though, is that L'Espoir will presumably have a copy ...'
'... and so will wait for a pilot and anchor there?'
'I hope so,' Ramage said, 'but I hope it doesn't mean we have to try to capture three rocky islands.'
Wagstaffe walked the starboard side of La Robuste's quarterdeck and reflected that commanding a ship was a satisfying experience, even if the ship was a prize frigate and all he had to do for the next few hundred miles was stay in the wake of the Calypso. This was easy enough in daylight but at night it was difficult to follow the triangle of three poop lanterns. In fact, in the last couple of nights he had gone to his cot and fallen asleep to waken almost at once, certain that the three lights had gone out of sight, and the officer of the deck (Kenton the first time and Martin the second) had been startled to find the commanding officer suddenly flapping round the deck in a boat cloak, staring forward, grunting and going below again, all without a word of explanation.
Well, Wagstaffe told himself, how on earth did one explain all that to junior lieutenants? Now he thought about it, both Kenton and Martin were sensible enough to report the moment they lost sight of the lights - indeed, there'd be enough yelling in the darkness, with the officer of the deck shouting questions at the lookouts and making a noise which would come down the skylight like a butt full of cold water.
It is easy enough to be brave and confident when the sun shines bright, he thought defensively, but hard on a dull cloudy day when it is raining. Harder still at nightfall, and dam' nearly impossible at three o'clock in the morning. Three o'clock courage, that's what he lacked. It's what distinguished Captain Ramage from most other men: he had it in abundance. It was also, Wagstaffe admitted, what kept Captain Ramage's officers poised on the balls of their feet all the time. Not because he yelled and screamed when things went wrong: perhaps it would be easier if he did. No, it was that chilly, quizzical and questioning look from those dark eyes set under thick eyebrows that was far more reproachful than words. They seemed to say: 'I trained you and trusted you: now look what you've done . . .'
Wagstaffe lifted his 'distance staff' and held it up. He was proud of it because it was so easy to make and to use. He had been told to keep one cable astern of the Calypso and in her wake. One cable was 200 yards precisely, not 150 or 250. It was a distance which anyone in the Calypso could check with a quadrant or sextant in a few moments because of the two simple facts: if you knew the height of an object (in this case a mainmast) and the angle it made from you, it was easy enough to work out how far away it was: the mast made the vertical side of a right-angled triangle and the angle was opposite, between the base and hypotenuse. And of course the base was the distance, in this case two hundred yards.
However, to avoid having to get a quadrant or sextant out of its box to measure the angle, it was easy enough to cut two notches in a short stick at appropriate distances apart so that when you held the stick vertically at arm's length, the lower notch was level with the Calypso's after waterline, and her mainmasthead touched the upper notch. If the mast appeared shorter than the distance between the notches, La Robuste wasmore than 200 yards astern: if taller, they were too close.
In fact it was not too difficult to keep station because both frigates were almost the same size and of course French-designed and built, with the sails cut by French sailmakers. Providing La Robuste set the same sails, and providing the men at the wheel, the quartermaster and the officers of the deck stayed alert in this sun (which was really getting some heat in it as the latitude decreased) it was easy.
What had Captain Ramage in mind? The series of rendezvous he had given to Wagstaffe, a latitude and longitude for each day, in case they lost each other during the night and were not in sight at dawn, ended up at five degrees North and fifty-two West, which was the South American coast at Cayenne... The French kit of charts on board La Robuste did not include French Guiana, except as a half-inch square on the chart of the south part of the North Atlantic. Cayenne, Devil's Island... Wagstaffe shivered. It was probably no healthier than it sounded. Devil's Island was said to be the place Bonaparte sent his enemies. Well, it must be a big island because the Frenchman had a lot of enemies. And friends, too, judging from England's lack of allies.