'Point!' shouted Lacey.
Jackson took the trigger line coiled on top of the breech and walked back until he was standing at its full extent. He bent down on his right knee with his left leg flung out sideways. As he did that men picked up the handspikes and stood ready.
Jackson sighted along the barrel and called 'Muzzle left!' to the handspikemen, gesturing with his left hand. They levered the rear of the carriage to the right, so that the muzzle of the gun came round to the left, and stopped when Jackson called,'Well!'
Lacey then gave the third order in the sequence of single word commands normally used. 'Elevate!' he shouted.
The men thrust their handspikes under the breech of the gun, levering it up by using the steps cut into the after end of the carriage as a pivot, and lifted. Stafford pulled out the wedge-shaped quoin and the handspikemen slowly lowered the breech again, watching Jackson as he sighted along the barrel.
The moment he called, 'Well!', Stafford rammed in the wooden wedge and as soon as he felt the weight of the breech firmly resting on it he called, 'Down!' The handspikemen jumped clear but Stafford stood by the breech, awaiting the next order.
'Ready!' Lacey called, looking anxiously at Ramage.
Stafford leaned over and cocked the lock, and the click, combined with Jackson looking round expectantly at him, suddenly roused Ramage; with a shock he realized that he was not sure whether he should first have taken formal possession of the Diamond Rock. What on earth did one do? When you captured an enemy ship you hoisted your own ensign above his, but what did you do with an island? He remembered vaguely that he had occasionally read of some formal annexation when a new island was discovered. A flag was hoisted and speeches were made. Did the same rules apply when you captured one?
He racked his brain for a precedent, could think of none, and hastily decided that too much formality would be better than too little. It was wiser to say a few pompous words that subsequently proved to be unnecessary than to fail to say them and provoke Their Lordships' wrath. Apart from that, young post captains at the bottom of the Navy List rarely capture islands. If Ramage, Nicholas, is setting a precedent, then he will do it in style, he told himself.
He removed his hat and Lacey hurriedly did the same. The men stood rigidly to attention and did it so naturally that he realized they were all expecting some sort of ceremony, though probably for their battery rather than for the whole Rock.
What the deuce should he say? He coughed and tucked his hat under his left arm. He ought to be wearing his sword. Lacey's rapt expression would have been more suitable if he was about to be blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than listen to his Captain make a fool of himself.
'I, Nicholas Ramage, Captain in the Royal Navy and commanding officer of His Majesty's frigate Juno ...’ That was a good start, but what now? He thought for a moment and continued '. . . do hereby take possession of this island, known as the Rocher du Diamant, or the Diamond Rock . . . for and on behalf of His Majesty King George the Third!'
The men began cheering wildly and an excited Lacey joined in, waving his hat in the air. Ramage, who had been expecting the men to start giggling, was so pleased with their reaction to words which had sounded ponderous and absurd to him, that he began to grin broadly. After a moment he managed to arrange his expression into a stern look, more befitting a conqueror, albeit of a barren rock and, as soon as the cheering stopped he looked around, as though surveying this newest gem in the King's crown, put his hat back on his head and said in a ringing voice: 'And I hereby name this battery the Marchesa Battery. May it play its part in defending the Diamond Rock!'
Again the men burst out in a roar of cheering and one of them began singing the first line of 'Hearts of Oak are our men!' and the rest of them took it up, bellowing lustily.
The moment they finished Ramage gestured to Lacey who took a pace forward and shouted 'Marchesa Battery - fire!'
Jackson tugged the trigger line and the gun gave a prodigious roar which echoed back from the Rock immediately behind it. Smoke spurted from the muzzle, spreading into an oily yellow cloud. The trucks of the carriage clattered as they ran back over the rocky surface and the rope breeching suddenly tautened and stretched as it absorbed the recoil and then thrust the carriage forward again a few inches. A mile to seaward there was a vertical spurt of water, like a whale spouting,
Ramage walked over to examine each end of the breeching to make sure it had not chafed on the rocks round which it was secured. One round remained, but he decided against using it: the next job was to get more powder and shot over from the Juno, but that could wait until tomorrow; then the men would only have to row a few yards. There was no point in leaving the gun manned; the risk of the French making a determined attempt during the night to recapture a barren rock they did not yet know they had lost was, to say the least of it, remote.
He let the men chatter happily for a few minutes, laughing and joking, teasing Jackson that he had missed the invisible ship, and then he said to Lacey: 'Secure the gun now, and we'll do those soundings.'
Fifteen minutes later the jolly boat was being rowed slowly up and down the south side of the Rock, close under the sheer cliff, with a man standing in the bow heaving a lead and reporting the depths he found. Ramage used the boat compass to take rough bearings and Lacey busily wrote down the depths and bearings as they were called out.
They started right close in to the cliffs, so close that the men occasionally had to fend off with the blades of their oars as a swell wave pushed the boat against the rock face. Ramage soon stopped glancing upwards because it made him dizzy: the cliff soared up vertically; from the boat it might have been five thousand feet high, rather than five hundred. Just as it soared up vertically into the sky, so it plunged vertically to the sea bed. The depths right up against the foot of the cliff were staggering, and he was glad he had told Lacey to bring the deep sea lead, as well as the hand lead. They were finding forty fathoms close into the cliff, and fifty fathoms only thirty yards out.
As the boat reached the end of the fifteenth run and turned to begin the next, and the leadsman, with water streaming down him, hurriedly coiling up the line, Ramage leaned across the thwart to look at Lacey's rough chart. The picture of the sea bed slowly taking shape on the paper from the depths and the bearing was far from reassuring. Lacey looked up anxiously, knowing how much depended on the result of the survey, and Ramage commented with as much nonchalance as he could muster: 'We won't risk running aground, anyway.'
Bad as it was, it could have been worse. There was a lot of coral down there, staghorn coral as far as could be judged from the pieces that came up with the lead. The trouble was that the scooped-out depression in the bottom of the lead, which was filled with tallow, was only intended to have sand or mud adhere to it; the tiny bits of coral that the lead knocked off as it hit the bottom were hardly enough for a proper identification. Any sort of coral was bad, though: it was jagged and sharp and quickly chafed anchor cables, and the Juno, Ramage reflected grimly, would be laying out four anchors . , . Perhaps only three, if the present calm weather held.
As he watched the birds wheeling round the cliff - he saw a white tropic bird with its long forked tail streaming out like two ribbons - he was thankful that.there were no back eddies of wind to drive the Juno against the cliff. None, he corrected himself, with the wind in this direction. No back eddies and very little swell. He looked up again at the top of the cliff, which was gaunt, grey and cold even in the sunlight, and so sheer that only a few bushes managed to grow in cracks and crevices, and for the hundredth time he wondered whether he could do it.