Ramage's Devil

'Headsail sheets, there!'

The men knew what to do; that much was obvious in the way the sails had been set. So now he need give only brief orders which took care of the trimming.

'Braces! Altogether now, haul! Now the sheets!'

A glance ahead showed the brig now steady on the other tack.

'Mr Swan,' Ramage said quietly, walking over to the wheel, 'I think you can get another point or two to windward...'

He watched the luff of the mainsail and then the leech.

'And another couple of spokes?'

Swan turned the wheel two more spokes but his movements lacked certainty: he was clearly nervous.

'Come now, Mr Swan,' Ramage said, a sharper note in his voice. 'I don't expect to have to give the first lieutenant compass courses to steer to windward. Now look'ee, you can lay the Pointe des Espagnols - that's the headland on your larboard bow.'

With that he turned away and said to Sarah, 'Can you see L'Espoir over there at anchor? I think she's gone: sailed while we were having our trouble with the bosun.'

She turned and looked over the larboard quarter at all the ships moonlit against the black line of low cliffs with the town of Plougastel in the distance. Unused to allowing for a change in bearings she took two or three minutes before finally reporting: 'No, she's not there. But she can only be...'

'Yes,' Ramage said, 'half an hour or so,' and noted it was time to tack again: the brig was moving along well and the ebb was helping hurry them seaward. He went over to Swan and gave him the new heading for when they had gone about.

'Follow the cliff along from Brest. You see the village of Portzic? Now, just beyond that next headland - you see the building? That's Fort de Delec. You should be able to lay it, but if a messenger has reached them they'll open fire. And just beyond, on top of the cliff, is the Lion Battery. If the fort and battery begin firing at us, we'll tack over to the other side.'

There was no need to tell Swan that on the other tack they would be heading for the Cornouaille Battery on the Camaret peninsula, and if the fire from that became hot enough to force them to tack northwestward again back to the Pointe St Mathieu side, they would be steering for the next fort, at Mengam, with three isolated and large rocks also waiting in the fairway for them...

The Murex went about perfectly: the headsails slapped across as the bow came round and were swiftly sheeted in; both topsails were braced sharp up on the larboard tack; Swan moved the wheel back and forth three or four spokes and then reported: 'I can lay a bit to windward of the Lion Battery, sir.'

Already the Château was dropping astern fast and Ramage watched the irregular shape of Fort de Delec. Distance was always hard to estimate in the darkness, but a mile? At night an object usually seemed closer - so to the French gunners the Murex would seem to be just within range. Just? Well within range, and Sarah murmured: 'I imagine Frenchmen staring along the barrels of guns...'

It seemed to be tempting fate to make a reassuring comment, and anyway she was not frightened. 'If they're going to open fire, it'll be in the next two or three minutes,' he said.

She held his arm in an unexpected gesture, and he was startled to find she was trembling. 'Will it look bad if I go below if they start shooting?'

He gripped her hand. 'Of course not. But it will be more frightening.'

'More frightening? I don't understand.'

'Dearest, if you stay on deck and see where the shot fall, you'll see there's no danger. If you go below you'll be waiting for the next shot to come through the deck and knock your head off!'

'I feel cold and shaky all of a sudden,' she said. 'Not frightened exactly. Apprehensive, perhaps.'

'When you shoot a man with a pistol you usually feel shaky afterwards,' Ramage said dryly, and added: 'I feel cold and shaky every time after I've been in action. I think everyone does.'

He looked up at Fort de Delec again. He felt he could see down the muzzles of the guns. Yes, there was the straight line of the walls; there were the embrasures. The moon had risen high enough now that he knew he would see the antlike movement of people if the guns were being loaded and trained round. It was a confounded nuisance commanding a ship which had no nightglass and no telescopes. No log or muster book for that matter - the telescopes had presumably been looted, and all the ship's papers would have been taken away by the French authorities. And charts - well, the only relevant one he had glanced at by lantern light just before getting under way, 'A Draught of the Road and Harbour of Brest with the adjacent Coast', must have been copied from a captured French one, but even then gave only one line of soundings from the town of Brest right along the Gullet, stopping as it reached the first of the three rocks, Mengam, and the man at the lead could be calling out twenty fathoms amidships as the bow hit the rock.

Another couple of minutes and they would tack again and then he wanted plenty of lookouts. With luck he would be able to leave Mengam safely to one side so that on the next tack to the northwest he could pass close to the last of the three rocks, which was in fact a small reef appropriately named Les Fillettes.

The Cornouaille Battery was silent, but that was to be expected: a boat would have to be sent over to the Camaret peninsula to raise the alarm, although they would pick it up from the other forts. This next tack would bring them within range of Fort de Mengam. Was the fort named after its silent ally in the middle of the Gullet, or the other way about?

He lifted the speaking trumpet as Sarah murmured: 'Anyone raising the alarm at these forts and batteries would use the same road we rode along that afternoon from Pointe St Mathieu.'

'Now my dear, you can understand my interest in the number of guns each of them mounted.'

'You didn't explain,' she said.

'I'm always interested in French forts. I hardly expected we'd be sailing out in these circumstances!'

She shivered and turned to look back at the town and harbour. 'No, you were hoping eventually to sail your own ship in, on some wild escapade.'

'Yes,' he admitted, 'one never ignores a chance to learn about an enemy, but I prefer having my wife beside me!'

'You are being more polite than a new husband needs to be: I am a nuisance!'

He began shouting orders through the speaking trumpet and once again the Murex's bow swung across the eye of the wind to the southwest: once again straining men hauled at the sheets and braces to trim the topsails. If only he could set the courses as well; then with more than double the amount of canvas drawing the brig would be out of the Gullet and into the Atlantic, passing the Pointe St Mathieu to starboard and the shoals to larboard off the Camaret peninsula, like a stoat after a rabbit.

He walked up to the mainmast, partly to leave Swan on his own and help him gain a confidence which had probably been badly battered by the mutiny, and partly to place extra lookouts. He called for Auguste, Albert and Louis.

'You know the Mengam?' he asked.

'Yes, captain, I was just coming to warn you: it is very near.'

'And the one beyond, and then Les Fillettes?'

'Yes, I know them all; I have fished around them dozens of times. In fact the Mengam is fine on the bow. You - yes, you can see it. Look ...'

He stood beside Ramage, who saw they would pass clear and instructed the three Frenchmen to watch for other rocks. He walked aft to point it out to Swan, who seemed to have benefited from being left alone at the wheel. He had more life in him; he said, in the first time he had spoken except in answer to a question: 'I thought it'd be the batteries we'd be dodging, sir, not the rocks.'

Ramage then remembered that the Murex had been brought in while it was still daylight. 'You were able to watch the scenery as you came in?'