'I've just realized that,' the Master said ruefully, pointing to smoke drifting away from the clifftop. 'He might have warned us!'
'He did,' Ramage said, 'he wrote me a note but I forgot to pass the word.'
'Well, sir, we're ready to start hoisting the next gun,' Southwick said stiffly, 'and the purser is attending to the provisions to go up in the tub. A month for fourteen men, you said, sir.’
'Yes, but we'll make it three months if we have the time: it's the quickest way of getting it all on shore. I want to let go of the jackstay and get clear of here by nightfall. If we can get three months' supplies by then, so much the better. Warn the purser, so he can get them on deck ready. Lacey can go on shore now to start on the other battery.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At noon next day a weary but exultant Ramage stood between the two guns of the Juno battery, 570 feet up on top of Diamond Rock. The sun was almost directly overhead, the sea a deep blue and stippled by waves. The headland formed by Diamond Hill, across the Fours Channel, seemed near enough to touch.
Below him the Juno rode at anchor with the Surcouf nearby. Wagstaffe was rounding the Rock in La Créole, obviously anxious to know what progress had been made. From the schooner's deck Wagstaffe should be able to see the Junos standing at the edge of the battery, even if he could not make out the barrels of the guns which were now pointing towards the headland.
Ramage turned to the north-westward where, in the distance beyond many other peaks, he could see the flattened top of Mont Pelée. Then he looked south-eastward towards Pointe des Salines, at the southern end of Martinique. Still no sign of the French convoy nor of Admiral Davis and the Invincible but, more worrying, still no sign of La Mutine returning. Perhaps the Admiral had held on to Baker, but that seemed unlikely, and anyway it did not explain why the Invincible had not arrived. Today was Friday and Baker had left on Monday. He had been trying to avoid the thought for the past twenty-four hours, but there was only one sensible answer: something had happened to Baker. For one reason or another La Mutine had not arrived in Barbados, and so the Admiral had not received the warning that the convoy was due.
It was a distinct possibility: La Mutine might have been dismasted in a sudden squall, sprung a leak, or been captured by French privateers. There might even be a French frigate lurking out there, sent on ahead of the convoy ...
Both the guns were loaded and Aitken was waiting patiently. The man was so tired that he looked like a ghost, but he was still alert and active. He had been pleased at Ramage's praise but was apparently envious that Lacey was at work rigging a jackstay from the Marchesa battery.
Ramage was in no hurry: he wanted to imprint the scene in his memory. If the French arrived before the Invincible ...The convoy would round Pointe des Salines with all the ships bunched up. There would be no stragglers for once, because the captain of each merchant ship knew that Fort Royal was being blockaded. The frigates would be on the alert and the convoy would hug the coast . . . He stood for ten minutes fighting imaginary actions that would prevent the convoy reaching Fort Royal, and trying to calculate all the possibilities open to the French. At the end of it his calculations seemed of little value. What the Juno and the Surcouf could do depended on three things: the size of the convoy, the size of its escort, and whether or not Admiral Davis had arrived. Trying to work out tactics now was like trying to guess the sequences in a game of chess against Bowen, who always seemed to have dozens of unexpected bishops, knights, castles and queens at his beck and call. He turned to the First Lieutenant. 'Very well, Mr Aitken, are we ready?'
'Aye, aye, sir, the battery's ready,' the young Scot answered reproachfully, and Ramage realized that he must have been standing staring out across the sea for fifteen minutes or more.
The men, deeply tanned from the sun, their clothes torn, were shuffling into line and Aitken was standing in front of them. Ramage's heart sank as they obviously expected a speech and he had to admit they deserved one. They had slaved away at the battery and many of them had asked to be allowed to stay on and man it. There was not a bit of shade from the blazing sun, except whatever they could rig up for themselves, and no protection from rain.
Aitken brought them to attention and Ramage began speaking. He told them that they and their shipmates in the Juno had just done something that most people would have thought impossible and no one had ever previously attempted. He was proud, he said, to name their achievement the Juno battery. He wanted to end his little speech on an amusing note, and thanked them for leaving rope ladders for him to climb up the more difficult parts of the Diamond. 'I still think I should have come up in the tub last night,' he added. 'Nearly six hundred feet is too much for someone whose daily climbing is limited to the companionway!'
The men cheered him and Aitken gave the order for them to fall in at the guns, which were loaded and had already been laid. The First Lieutenant asked Ramage if he thought the shot would reach across the Fours Channel to the nearest part of the mainland, the steep cliffs where Diamond Hill met the sea.
Ramage smiled knowingly. 'We'll have to keep a sharp lookout for the fall of shot,' he said, and Aitken grinned confidently, little guessing that Ramage had anticipated the question the moment he decided to set up the battery and had failed to work out a definite answer.
The Captain had to be infallible. He had to be an expert in ballistics, at home with trajectories and the effect of gravity and range on a 12-pound shot. He had to be a mathematical wizard, able to work out the trajectory (and thus the range) of shot fired from a height of 570 feet when all he knew were some vague ranges for shot fired from sea level.
Neither he nor Southwick were even sure of the distance from the Diamond to the shore: Southwick's chart was the best available, yet far from accurate and drawn on a small scale. It gave the distance as about 2100 yards, but it could be a hundred yards more or less.
An error of two hundred yards in the chart could be critical. The range tables he had on board for a 12-pounder gun, such as they were, gave a maximum of 1800 yards using six degrees' elevation, with a four-pound charge of powder. The Juno's gunner had tables giving shorter ranges, but they were scribbled in an old notebook and the man seemed more concerned with the recipe for making up the blacking for painting the guns than firing them.
Using the ranges he had, what happened when you placed the gun on top of a rock 570 feet high? Did a six degree elevation still give you a range of 1800 yards? Or increase it? Both he and Southwick were sure it increased it, but had no idea how to calculate the amount. When Ramage had begun cursing his own lack of mathematical knowledge, Southwick laughed and pointed out that it hardly mattered; for the battery to be effective, its shot did not have to reach the mainland because no French ship would pass within a hundred yards of the cliff for fear of getting caught by wind eddies off the hill and would most probably stay in the middle of the Fours Channel. 'Never bet on a horse once the race has started, sir,' he added. 'Just look wise and watch where the shot lands!'
It was good advice and Ramage had followed it. The two guns of the Juno battery were loaded with four-pound charges and carefully elevated to six degrees and Aitken was waiting patiently for Ramage to give the signal for the final order that would provide the answer.