Ramage looked round at all the faces and found most of them were grinning. He had never before had such a large group muster on the lowerdeck, and the presence of the lieutenants and the ship's present position accounted for the air of excitement which was as heady as the smell of hops to leeward of a brewery.
'Fall out the officers,' Ramage said, 'and all of you make yourselves comfortable.' Unaware of Sergeant Ferris's problem he added: 'I am going through all this once. Then if there's anything someone doesn't understand, ask questions.'
He looked round at the men again and said in level tones: 'What is the difference between an axe and a hammer? Let's say the head of each is a chunk of metal weighing eight pounds. If you hit a plank with the hammer, you get a dent. But if you hit a plank with an axe, you get a deep cut the length of the blade.
'Why a dent with one and a deep cut with the other? Well, you've already guessed that the hammer's eight pounds when it hits the plank is spread over an area of the head likely to be twice the size of a guinea. But the eight pounds of the axe is concentrated on the blade - say four inches long by less than the thickness of a sheet of very thin paper. That's why you use an axe to fell a tree, not a hammer. Obviously you wouldn't use an axe blade to drive in a nail, either; you want the energy spread out over the flat head.'
He looked round at the sailors. Yes, they understood the similes, even though they were puzzled why the captain was suddenly sermonizing like one of Mr Wesley's men.
'Now supposing you want to smash a plank of wood into kindling. You can have an eight-pound hammer or you can have an eight-pound axe - you have the choice. Or you can have eight one-pound axes or hammers.
'Supposing you were in a hurry: instead of an hour you had only five minutes to smash that plank into kindling. Wouldn't you be better off using your eight pounds of weight by chopping with eight one-pound axes rather than one axe weighing eight pounds?'
Several men immediately said yes, and the rest of them quickly muttered their agreement.
Ramage looked round and spotted Stafford. He pointed at the Cockney. 'Why would we be better with eight smaller axes, Stafford?'
'Well, sir, stands ter reason, dunnit: eight blades choppin' away at eight different places is better than one big blade - that's if you want the plank as kindlin'.'
'Exactly. For chopping down a tree...'
'Oh well, sir, the one big blade, o'course.'
'Good. You all notice I am talking of a plank and not the tree; if it was a tree we'd be using the big axe to chop in the same place; because it's a plank for kindling we use eight small axes chopping in several places.'
Most of the men were nodding, reminding Ramage of a flock of pigeons. This business of speaking to them in parables was, in this instance anyway, a good one. And anything that helped maintain some sort of discipline in the heat of battle was all to the good. He found it difficult to control himself in the roar, smoke, flame and shouting of battle afloat, so he could not blame the seamen for regarding action on board an enemy ship as a concentrated group of men fighting a series of hand-to-hand actions, cutlass against cutlass, boarding pike against pistol, tomahawk against musket. This was the hammer method, and usually it worked: the owner of any unfamiliar face was killed or taken prisoner.
'Very well, the "plank" we might be attacking using the several small axes method is, I hope, the French frigate L'Espoir when she arrives.'
From the satisfied 'Ahs' and the way that the men wriggled to make themselves more comfortable, as though settling in for a long session, Ramage knew that only a handful of men had thought that far ahead.
'Now, capturing L'Espoir - providing she arrives here and providing we are still here to meet her - is going to be the most difficult job we've ever undertaken. Not the most dangerous, just the most difficult. You saw how the "plague" trick worked, and you'll remember that Mr Orsini did a similar thing once in the Mediterranean. You were all with me when we dealt with the renegades at the Ilha Trinidade. But this time each of us will be fighting with one hand tied behind his back.
'There are fifty prisoners on board L'Espoir that we are under orders to rescue. We won't know where those prisoners are being kept in L'Espoir; we don't even know if the captain will be desperate enough to threaten to kill them unless we let him go free. Of course we can't use our great guns for fear of killing the prisoners. Now, listen carefully.'
Quickly he outlined the plan, explaining how each group of twenty men would be under a particular leader and would have its own task. 'So you see,' he concluded, 'the frigate is a plank of wood, and the eight groups are the eight small axes. Has anyone any questions?'
Jackson stood up. 'Yes, sir. When do we expect L'Espoir?'
The Calypso's gunroom, occupying the after part of the lowerdeck, was just far enough forward to clear the end of the tiller as it moved from side to side in a great arc, responding to the lines led down to it from the barrel of the wheel, but not far enough to be out of range of the harsh squeaking of the pintles of the rudder blade grinding on the gudgeons which supported them. When the Calypso was under way the rudder moved constantly, but the noise was almost lost in the symphony composed of water rushing past the hull and the creaking of the whole ship working as she flexed like a tree in a strong wind to ride across the troughs and crests of the waves.
The gunroom was an open space between four large boxes on one side and three on the other. The boxes were in fact cabins formed by three walls, or bulkheads, made of painted canvas stretched tightly over battens, with the ship's side forming the fourth. Each had its door, and each door had a stone-ground glass window in the upper half. Over each door was a sign bearing a carefully painted rank - surgeon, first lieutenant, and second lieutenant on the starboard side, Marine officer, third lieutenant, master and fourth lieutenant on the larboard side.
A table and forms fitted most of the remaining space, though the object like a thick tree trunk at the after end was the mizenmast, while the hatch on the larboard side, between the table and the master's cabin, and on which everyone stubbed a foot at least once a week, was the scuttle to the magazine, a reminder if any was needed that the ship's officers lived just above several tons of gunpowder.
Forward of the gunroom were two smaller cabins on the starboard side (for the gunner and the carpenter) and two to larboard, occupied by the purser and the bosun. A large cabin forward of the bosun's box was the midshipmen's berth, built to be the home of up to a dozen who could range in age from fourteen or fifteen to fifty, but at present the sole inhabitant was Midshipman Paolo Orsini, who thus had more space than anyone else in the ship except the captain.
Forward of these cabins the Marines had their tables and forms, and at night slung their hammocks, and forward of them was what was usually called the 'messdeck', because the seamen forming the rest of the ship's company lived there, six or eight men to a table or 'mess' and slinging their hammocks at night.
Right in the bow, most of the time with a leg in irons, were the Calypso's half of La Robuste's prisoners, guarded by a couple of Marines with muskets. For a couple of hours in the morning the French prisoners were freed for exercise but, as Ramage had told Renwick, it was unlikely they would be kept on board for more than a few days; not enough to worry about them being in irons.
In the gunroom, with the day's work in the ship completed and only the anchor watch, lookouts and prisoners' guard to keep men from their hammocks and cots, the ship's lieutenants sat in their cabins or at the table.