'Excellent,' Ramage said calmly. 'Now you continue to watch the Surcouf for signals. Look at her!' he exclaimed. The British frigate was within half a mile of the nearest merchant ships and heeling gracefully in the wind as her topgallants were furled. Aitken obviously wanted to make a leisurely job of the merchantmen, but Ramage hoped he would not forget the two remaining frigates.
A glance over the starboard beam reassured him that they were still down to leeward and then he looked back at the convoy. The nearest three ships, which had been on the landward side, were now four hundred yards ahead. As he concentrated on them he saw that their sails were not just badly trimmed, they were flapping, with sheets and braces slack, if not cut. Boats were being lowered round them - the ships were dead in the water and their crews were abandoning them! He looked at the others and saw that they were all being abandoned.
Southwick was also staring at the convoy, disappointment showing on his face like a child whose toys had been snatched away. Ramage, equally dumbfounded, noticed that most of the boats were now fairly leaping through the water as the men in them rowed frantically for the beach. They were obviously scared out of their wits at the sight of the Juno beating down on them from the north and the Surcouf stretching up from the south.
'Surprise, sir, that's what did it,' Southwick said cryptically.
Ramage grimaced as he said: ‘I don't know who was most surprised.'
Seven merchantmen abandoned and drifting out to sea through the Fours Channel and two French frigates neatly tied together in a parcel. He needed the Surcouf to help the Juno capture the two remaining frigates, which were under fire from the Diamond, but first he must secure the merchant ships: they were the main target.
'Bear away towards the frigates, Mr Southwick,' he said. Aitken and Wagstaffe needed orders. He looked round for Orsini and found him proffering the signal book.
He opened the index, looked under 'Prizes' and hurriedly turned to the page listed. Ah, there it was.
'Hoist La Créole's pendant and number 242.' He then read the first part of the signal, for Southwick's benefit. 'Stay by prizes . . .' He could rely on Wagstaffe knowing that he was to make sure none of the French crews returned to their ships.
Now he was having second thoughts about the two remaining frigates. Dare he leave the one nearest to the Diamond to the batteries while he tackled the other? She seemed to be hove-to, lying with her foretopsail backed. Waiting for her consort to join her perhaps. He looked round for the frigate that had been leading the convoy when it came in sight. She too was lying hove-to.
Ramage took his own telescope from the binnacle box drawer and looked at the frigate nearest the Diamond. Hove-to! Her foretopsail yard was slewed round, the maintopsail in shreds and even as he watched he saw a cloud of dust rising up amidships, the sign of a plunging roundshot hitting her decks. He looked at the ship more closely and there were ominous gaps in the main and foreshrouds. Even as he watched the foretopsail yard canted down as one of the lifts parted, and a moment later the whole yard crashed to the deck. A spurt of water almost beside the mainchains showed a near miss from either the Juno or the Ramage battery. That particular frigate could certainly be left to the gunners on the Diamond. Their first prize was a 36-gun frigate, and they had not a drop of rum on the Rock to celebrate it.
The next decision was not hard to make; one frigate only was left and the Juno and Surcouf perfectly placed to windward. He examined the frigate carefully through the telescope in case she too had been damaged by the batteries, but she seemed genuinely hove-to, with her captain no doubt wondering how he could report to the Governor at Fort Royal or St Pierre that he had lost the whole convoy and three frigates, and that Diamond Rock was suddenly erupting as Mont Pelée occasionally did, only sprouting roundshot instead of hot rocks and lava. Any moment the frigate captain would wake up, get under way and make a bolt for Fort Royal.
He tucked the telescope under his arm and opened the signal book to check a number. Number twenty-eight would tell Aitken all that he needed to know. The ships are to take suitable stations for their mutual support, and engage the enemy as soon as they get up with them. It was not quite the way an admiral would use the signal, but Aitken needed no more than a hint. As he turned to call the boy, he saw the French ship sheet home her topsail and get under way.
'Orsini, hoist the Surcouf’spendant and number twenty-eight.'
Southwick had just bustled back to the binnacle after getting the Juno's sails trimmed to perfection, but he was scowling. 'Did you see that, sir?' he demanded. 'She hasn't the guts to stand and fight, and she has a mile lead of us and a mile and a half on the Surcouf!'
'I can't blame him,' Ramage said mildly. 'The world has tumbled round his ears in the last hour!'
The Master gave a monumental sniff. 'It hasn't finished yet,' he announced.
Ramage wagged a warning finger. 'There are three hundred men on board that ship. We have sixty-three, and the Surcouf the same. Don't forget that. We haven't captured a frigate ourselves yet: the Diamond knocked out one, and two of them locked themselves together!'
'But they don't know we're short of men,' Southwick said with a broad grin. 'With the Juno ranging up on one side of her and the Surcouf on the other, 'twouldn't surprise me if she -'
He broke off as Jackson, a look of horror on his face, pointed ahead. A moment later there was a sound like a clap of thunder which rolled and echoed back from the mountains, and where the escaping French frigate had been there was now only a swirling mass of yellow and black smoke spurting and boiling upwards and then curling and billowing. Round the base of the smoke was a mass of ripples surrounded by dozens of splashes as pieces of the ship, flung high into the air by the explosion, finally landed. There was complete silence in the Juno apart from the gurgling of the sea as the ship drove on towards the pall of smoke, which was now beginning to drift to leeward. Ramage felt sick but braced himself as he remembered that, dreadful as the sight had been - and still was, for the smoke seemed reluctant to disperse - it had saved the lives of many of his own men, those in the Juno and the Surcouf. Only then did he realize that the French ship must have blown up as a result of plunging fire from the Diamond batteries.
With the remaining frigate disabled there was no need for the Diamond batteries to go on firing at her; she would surrender to the Surcouf and the Juno.
'Orsini, hoist the Diamond's pendant and number thirty-nine.'
The Master nodded in agreement. 'Discontinue the engagement. Yes, we might as well tow her back to Bridgetown as a prize, We're assembling a bigger squadron out here than the Admiral has!'
Ramage flicked through the signal book once more and found what he wanted. Get to leeward of the chase. That would tell Aitken that he wanted to take possession of the disabled frigate before attempting to sort out the two that were locked together.
He turned to Southwick as the signal was hoisted and pointed to the frigate, which was slowly drifting westward through the Fours Channel, turning slowly like a feather in a stream as the wind caught her torn maintopsail aback and swung her round so far that she tacked and the sail filled. ‘Aitken will be getting to leeward of her in a few minutes, and I want the Juno tacking back and forth about eight hundred yards to windward.'
'She hasn't hauled down her colours yet,' Southwick commented as he put the speaking trumpet to his lips.
Ramage was less concerned with what was little more than a formality than with the problem of physically taking possession of this frigate and the two that were locked together. There would be nine hundred Frenchmen altogether. One mistake on his part, one hint to any of the three ships that the Juno and the Surcouf had less than seventy men on board, might result in some enterprising French captain boarding them, capturing both ships, getting the merchantmen manned again, and sailing the convoy into Fort Royal. There he would report the loss of one frigate blown up, two damaged but repairable, and two more captured: a net gain of one frigate for the French,