Looking forward again and upward Ramage could see the men on the Calypso's mainyard furling the sail neatly and securing it with gaskets, the long strips of canvas keeping it in place. He glanced at his watch and then looked at La Robuste and waited for the last gasket to be passed. The Calypso won by under half a minute, and that victory could no doubt be explained by defects in La Robuste's running rigging and the poor state of her gaskets - he had seen two tear in half, weakened by the heat and damp of a year in Far Eastern waters.
Forecourses were clewed up and then furled and La Robuste's time was better, allowing for the fact that Wagstaffe had to wait for the Calypso to make the first move because his orders were to conform with the Calypso. In topgallants ... the same. Obviously the Calypsos in La Robuste were enjoying themselves.
It was going to be a busy afternoon - preparations for making a landfall were, in this case, the same as for entering harbour, and as soon as the last sail was furled and the last topman down on deck again, Ramage nodded to Southwick, who was responsible for the fo'c'sle and all that went on there. The heavy anchor cable would have to be roused out while the blind bucklers closing the two hawsepipes would have to be taken off. That was always a difficult job under way with a following sea, since the bucklers were fixed securely to prevent seas coming in through the hawseholes.
One end of the first cable would then be led out through the starboard hawse and back on board again and secured to the ring of one of the two anchors on the starboard side. Then the end of a second cable would be led out of the larboard hawse and back to the ring of one of the two larboard anchors. People were often surprised that a ship the size of a frigate in fact carried six anchors and eight cables (seven of them each eighteen and a half inches in circumference and 720 feet long). But such people had never seen a ship at anchor in a high and a heavy sea.
The covers needed taking off the boats and a couple of quarterdeck guns should be loaded with blank charges in case it was necessary to make an urgent signal to LaRobuste. And ... well, Ramage admitted, that was about all. All that was needed next morning was the sight of the three mountains close to the mouth of the River Kourou, Pointe Charlotte and the Îles du Salut. Still, he'd be quite satisfied if they sighted the 'very remarkable conical hill' called Mont Diable in the pilot book but presumably Montagne du Diable, and which should warn in good time that he was a little too far south. Diable, diable ... it had started off with Bullivant in his delirium seeing Satan; now English devils in the imagination were going to be replaced by French diables in fact.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There they were, three flat-topped islands still grey in the distance and overlapping so that there appeared to be only two. That would be Île du Diable just coming clear on the left while Île Royale and Île St Joseph merged to the south. As his body swayed with the rolling of the Calypso, making it difficult to hold the telescope steady, they moved from side to side in the circular lens as though being viewed through the bottom of a drinking glass.
He turned aft to train the glass on La Robuste's quarterdeck. Yes, they too had sighted the islands; there was Wagstaffe hunched with the telescope to his eye and Kenton, Martin and Orsini standing in a row beside him at the quarterdeck rail like inquisitive starlings.
It had been disappointing at dawn when the first light seemed to spread outward from the ship and nothing had been in sight. The traditional cry of 'See a grey goose at a mile' had brought in the six lookouts stationed on deck round the ship and sent two aloft, and they had reported a clear horizon.
Then suddenly, as though a bank of fog had drifted away to reveal them (though the fog familiar in higher latitudes was of course unknown in the Tropics), they were ahead. Obviously there had been a haze hiding the coast until the sun lifted over the horizon and burned it up.
Ramage sighed, a natural reaction but one which led Southwick to ask: 'You expect trouble, sir?'
Trouble? They were too far off for him to be sure. If a frigate's masts showed up behind Île Royale, revealing that L'Espoir had arrived (and had time to send her prisoners over to Île du Diable), then yes, they had trouble. The idea, plan, gamble - he was not sure what to call it - that had come to him several days ago like a wind shadow, and the outline of which had since sharpened, as though someone had used a quill to run an inked line round it, would have been a waste of thought if L'Espoir had beaten them in.
More important, Southwick's question merely emphasized that the idea was just a gamble. You could put other fancy names to it, he told himself sourly, but it was still a gamble: he was like some pallid player putting a small fortune on the turn of a dice in the final desperate throw that could lose or save a home which had been in the family for generations and was a son's rightful inheritance. So if there were masts, he had lost; if there were no masts, he had won.
Won? That was nonsense. If there were no masts, then he had not yet lost, which was a far cry from winning. No, what Southwick's innocent and well-meant question emphasized, Ramage admitted to himself with bitterness, was that by pinning everything on beating L'Espoir to the Îles du Salut, he had not fully considered the consequences of losing the race.
If L'Espoir had not arrived, then the prisoners were still on board the frigate, and frigates were not invulnerable. But if L'Espoir had arrived, then the prisoners by now would be imprisoned on the Île du Diable in what the French pilot book called a 'fortified enclosure', and the whole purpose of these fortifications was to keep people (rescuers, in this case) out.
Southwick was still awaiting an answer.
'If L'Espoir is here, yes,' Ramage said.
'Because she'll have put her prisoners on shore?'
'Yes. There must be hundreds of prisoners on the island - perhaps more than one island. We can't be sure they still keep all the criminals on one island and the political prisoners on another.'
'I wonder if Bonaparte sees any difference in the two sorts,' Southwick commented. 'He's just as likely to put 'em all together.'
'That would mean our fifty would be among perhaps five thousand others; and five thousand prisoners means how many guards?'
Southwick gave one of his famous sniffs. They came of a standard strength, but he could give each one a particular meaning. This one indicated that the whole thing was absurd and not for the serious consideration of grown men.
'Even at one guard for every twenty prisoners, plus all the camp followers and cooks and administration people, we'd never stand a chance,' the master said. 'To find out if L 'Espoir's there we've got to get in sight of that fort on Île Royale, so they'll sight us and we lose surprise.'
'Yes,' Ramage said, and changed the subject, which was thoroughly depressing him. 'Now, we'd better start working out the positions of those reefs and shoals.'
'Aye, I have 'em noted from the pilot book,' Southwick said. 'The main bank is over there, between one and two miles nor'nor'west of Royale.' He pointed over the starboard bow.
At that moment Ramage saw Renwick down on the maindeck and called him up to the quarterdeck. The Marine captain's face was as usual burned a bright red from the sun and the skin of his nose was peeling, but he gave a smart salute.