He watched Southwick board from the jolly boat and saw that Wagstaffe was on his way from La Créole. Aitken, Lacey and Rennick were already on board, so he went to his cabin to lay out the chart and measure off some distances and bearings.
By dusk, as he watched Aitken and Wagstaffe being rowed to their ships, he felt a little more confident. Lacey was preparing a cutter to take over the men who would form the rest of the Surcouf’s ship's company. At least there were a dozen men who had been on board the former French frigate since she had been captured and, as Southwick had pointed out, by now they should know where everything was stowed.
The jolly boat was on its way to the Marchesa battery with written orders for the Juno and Ramage batteries, telling them that they were not to open fire or in any way reveal their presence until either the Juno or the Surcouf made the signal. The petty officer was told to place the signal mast on the western slope of the peak, where the signals he made would be seen by La Créole to seaward but not by French ships approaching from Pointe des Salines.
The Master offered to work out a new general quarters, watch and station bill for the Juno's reduced complement, and Ramage accepted gratefully. He also accepted Aitken's suggestion that all the former Tritons should stay on board the Juno. 'They bring you luck, sir,' the Scotsman had commented. 'You've been through a lot with them and now's not the time to tamper with Lady Fortune.'
As Ramage went down to his cabin he felt guilty about poor Southwick. He had more than an hour's work dividing the men into various groups - fo'c'sle men, foretopmen, maintopmen, mizentopmen, after guard, gunners - then he had to divide them into two watches, starboard and larboard, and finally give each man a number showing his place when the ship went into action, what arms he would carry for boarding or repelling boarders, his station for furling, reefing or loosing sails, anchoring or weighing, tacking the ship or wearing, making or shortening sail. It was a tedious, job, but it meant a seaman who knew that his number was, for example, 16 could see from the bill that he was a foretopman in the larboard watch, and when going into action he was second captain of a particular gun, that under arms he would have a cutlass and a tomahawk, and for the rest of the evolutions the bill showed him precisely what he did on the foretopsail yard. The Juno's original bill was for a full complement of 212 officers and men. Now Southwick had to make sure that every important task was performed using only sixty-three.
He could hear the clop-clop-clop of the pawls on La Créole's windlass as the schooner weighed to resume her patrol and make sure that by daybreak she would be off Diamond Hill. By then the Juno and the Surcouf would be under way and heading for Petite Anse d'Arlet, where they would anchor and wait, watching La Créole for signals with even more concentration than a fisherman waited for the float on his line to twitch.
He wondered what the Governor of Fort Royal made of the various pieces of information he was receiving. By now cavalry patrols along the coast must be reporting a great deal of activity off the Diamond, and he might be speculating what the Juno had been doing while hidden behind the island. The patrols might have heard the ranging shots of the Juno battery, though it was very unlikely they would have guessed where they came from.
He was taking a risk that the Governor might find a way of warning the convoy, but it was a slight one. There were only two ways of passing such a warning - sending out a vessel in the hope that it would find the convoy, or making a signal once it was in sight of the coast. Well, La Créole's frequent looks at Fort Royal and the patrol off the coast made sure that no pnivateers escaped to raise the alarm, and there were no signal masts anywhere along the coast. If the French hurriedly erected one at Pointe des Salines - the obvious place - it would be spotted by La Créole and he could land Marines to demolish it. But in any case the commander of the convoy escort would not be looking for signals: he would know there were no regular signal stations and, not expecting to receive signals, he would be unlikely to spot any made from the shore. There was just a possibility that a small fishing vessel was available in one of the two little harbours on the Atlantic side of the island, but the chance of such a craft being able to beat out against the Trade winds to get to the convoy in time - for its position was not known - was slight enough for him to ignore.
No, as long as he could keep the door shut on the privateers in Fort Royal and keep a sharp eye open for any sign of a signal mast being erected along the coast, especially at Pointe des Salines, he had little to fear. Meanwhile the Governor must be a very frustrated man.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By eight o'clock next morning the Juno and Surcouf were anchored in the Petite Anse d'Arlet three and a half miles north-west of Diamond Rock. They were a few hundred yards off a beach on which a few tiny but gaily-painted rowing boats were hauled up on the sand, their nets draped over rocks to dry. Ramage saw a few huts beyond the fringe of palm trees but apart from the occasional whiff of a cooking fire there was no sign of life: the people in the tiny village had obviously decided to keep out of sight of the ships that had suddenly arrived in their bay.
To the north-east the high peak of Morne la Plaine separated them from Fort Royal Bay while more peaks trended south to end in Diamond Hill, overlooking the Fours Channel with Diamond Rock beyond.
In the bay the water was so clear that he could see the bottom at fifty feet: from the Juno's bow the cable was visible all the way down to the anchor. There was still a slight offshore breeze but that did nothing to shake Ramage's conviction that it was going to be a scorching hot day with very little wind. These were just the conditions he wanted once the French convoy rounded Pointe des Salines because the merchant ships would have little more than steerage way. On the other hand light airs out in the Atlantic might delay the convoy's arrival for days.
As he walked the starboard side of the quarterdeck he reflected that the Master's log would record that the ship's company was employed 'as the Service required' and Southwick would have nothing to worry about if the Admiral suddenly arrived alongside for an inspection. The decks were scrubbed and the hammocks stowed in the nettings round the top of the bulwarks with the long canvas covers well tucked in. The brasswork had been polished with brickdust and reflected the early sun; the capstan was newly painted after being used to hoist the guns. Men were carrying the grindstone below after putting a fresh edge on cutlasses, tomahawks and pikes.
Two 12-pounders had been shifted over to larboard because the three now on the Diamond had all come from that side. He was still not used to the empty port on the quarterdeck where the 6-pounder that was now the Marchesa battery had once stood.
Short of men and short of guns, Ramage thought gloomily that on paper the Juno was more like a ship about to be paid off after a long commission than a frigate maintaining a close blockade of the most important French port in the West Indies. At least the paintwork gleamed, the rigging was ataunto and the sails in good repair.