As he climbed the steps Ramage was thankful his idea had effectively ensured that no one would be coming out to the anchored ships, but he wished the pilot had not taken fright so quickly: Auguste had not been able to ask the pilot to remain in his canoe but lead the way to the anchorage.
Aitken shouted to a seaman standing in the chains, ready with the lead: 'Give me a cast!' Then he gave orders to brace up the yard and trim the foretopsail sheets so that the Calypso turned for the last few hundred yards to the anchorage.
The leadsman reported. 'Six fathoms, soft mud.'
Ramage had already explained to Aitken the importance of the Calypso anchoring in the right place, so that La Robuste could position herself, and he kept both topsails shivering so that the Calypso had little more than steerage way.
Ramage watched the luffs of the sails and kept an eye on the quartermaster, who would signal the moment the Calypso was going too slowly for the rudder to bite. He glanced astern and noted that Wagstaffe was handling his ship perfectly.
'Five fathoms ... five fathoms ...' the leadsman's chant was monotonous but clear. He heaved the lead forward so that it dropped into the water and hit the bottom just as the mainchains passed over it. A quick up-and-down tug on the line confirmed that the lead was actually on the bottom, and by the feel of the piece of leather or cloth in his hand, marking the depths, he sang out the fathoms and feet.
The Calypso was now moving crabwise to the unmarked spot where Ramage intended to anchor, and Southwick's upraised arm showed that all was ready on the fo'c'sle. The anchor, stowed high up and parallel with the deck when on passage, had been lowered almost to the water. Ramage's eyes swept the luffs, saw the men at the wheel, and said: 'Down with the helm!'
Had he left it too late? Was the Calypso now going too slowly for the rudder to work effectively, or had the quartermaster (very sensibly) given the warning a few seconds early? In fact they could lower the anchor and, as soon as it held, the cable would swing the frigate round head to wind. Effective, but not very seamanlike, and the cable going under the hull was likely to wrench off copper sheathing.
But the Calypso's bow was coming round ... one point, two, three ... speeding up now ... six, seven, eight ... fourteen, fifteen, sixteen ... And with the wheel amidships and the foretopsail once again aback, because the yard had not been hauled round to compensate for the turn, the Calypso slowed.
Ramage walked to a gunport and looked over the side. The water was muddy and several pieces of palm fronds and odd branches were floating. But they stayed in the same place: the Calypso was stopped. Then they began moving towards the bow ... the frigate was beginning to move astern.
Ramage signalled to Southwick and heard first the splash of the anchor and then the thunder of the cable running through the hawse. And yes, the usual smell of burning as the cable, finally dry after being stowed for weeks in the cable tier, scorched itself and the wood of the hawsehole as it raced out.
A quick order to the topmen had the main and mizentopsails furled, but he waited for the signal from Southwick which would indicate that the foretopsail now thrusting the Calypso astern had dug in the anchor.
He returned to watching the rubbish. Finally the palm fronds and broken branches slowed down and then stayed alongside. He watched a rock on Île Royale which was lined up with a headland on Île du Diable. The two remained lined up. If the rock had moved out of line that would have been proof that the anchor was dragging and the palm fronds were drifting in a current moving at the same speed as the frigate.
Ramage then jumped up on to the breech of a gun to watch La Robuste anchoring. She ended up positioned perfectly, and as her anchor hit the water, Ramage saw that the pilot's canoe had just arrived at the jetty.
'They're in a hurry,' Aitken commented.
'I'm not surprised: the pilot has never had such a startling report to make the governor,' Ramage said.
'Now what do we do?'
'We hoist out all the boats and wait,' Ramage said. 'Wait and practise.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sergeant Ferris was, usually, a patient man. He had a rule that he would explain something three times to a Marine or seaman he regarded as intelligent and four times to a fool. But no one valuing his pride, sanity or eardrums would dare cause a fifth. If he had any sense he would do what Marine Hart was doing.
Hart made up in bulk and loudness of voice what he lacked in intelligence, and this resulted in him being, at six feet two inches tall and sixteen stone, the largest of the Calypso's Marines with a bellow that sounded like a bull with spring fever.
Ferris, now commanding the Marine detachment in La Robuste, was thankful that Hart was an amiable man. This was due less to his nature than the fact that it was almost impossible to insult him. When he accidentally trod on someone's foot and was promptly called a 'bloody great big oaf', Hart would grin and say proudly: 'Ah, I am big, ain't I?' Hart had been a Marine for more than a year before he discovered to his surprise that an oaf was neither a special sort of promise nor a swear word.
'Let's have one more go, men,' Ferris said, although he knew the twenty Marines in his party understood that he was using 'men' instead of 'Hart' because the man was liable to sulk if he thought he was being singled out. Hart, who was also lefthanded, was not difficult or dangerous when he sulked but it was, as Mr Renwick once remarked, like having a stunned elephant lying at the foot of the stairs.
'The idea is this. We have one hundred and sixty Marines and seamen, an' that's dragging in every man that can wield a cutlash or fire a pistol.'
To Sergeant Ferris a cutlass was always a cutlash, no matter how many times he heard Mr Renwick and the Calypso's officers pronounce it correctly. On one occasion Renwick had taken him to one side and explained that it might be bad for discipline if privates heard such an ordinary word mispronounced. Ferris, a great believer in pipeclay and discipline, agreed wholeheartedly. 'So,' Renwick said, promptly sweeping into the linguistic breach, 'it's pronounced "cutlass".'
'S'right, sir,' Ferris agreed, 'cutlash, like I always say.'
Ferris looked round at his twenty men, careful not to glare at Hart. 'Now the captain reckons that eighty men (that's half the totaclass="underline" half one side and half the other) is too many to h'act h'as a disciplined force.'
Anyone except Hart who had served under Ferris knew that under stress (except of course in action), the sergeant sprinkled his sentences with both too many and too few aitches. He was not particular where they felclass="underline" a word with a vowel at its threshold was always a convenient spot.
'So h'it h'as been decided to divide the entire force, one hundred and sixty Marines and seamen, h'into eight parties each of twenty men. 'Ow h'about that, 'art, do you understand?'
'Yus, sergeant,' Hart said, nodding his head like a bear trying to disperse buzzing flies.
'Right. Now h'each party will 'ave its h'own h'objective.'
Hart was not alone in trying to sort out the sergeant's aspiration.
'Ours will be the starboard gangway. We clear h'it. I do not want' - he spaced the words and emphasized them - 'h'any of the h'enemy left alive on the starboard gangway.'
'Wot about the fo'c'sle, sergeant?' Hart asked lugubriously.
'None of your affair, my man: you just confine your h'activities to the starboard gangway.'
Hart digested this and then asked: 'Wot about the quarterdeck, sergeant?'
Ferris took a deep breath. They were a good crowd, he had to admit that. They did not quarrel among themselves or try to dodge sentry duty in the more cramped parts of the ship, and they all agreed that Hart when possible should be the sentry at the water butt on deck, when it was in use, rather than, say, sentry at the captain's cabin, where the headroom was five feet four inches, leaving Hart with a surplus of ten inches. But why Hart? What had Ferris ever done, he asked himself, to have a Hart?