"Not bad for a man who can't read or write," Yorke said ironically.
"Well, sir," Jackson said, "I'd better be getting back before anyone spots my hammock is empty."
After the American left the cabin, Yorke said softly to himself, "An assured market, free freight and no risk: a merchant's dream, my dear Nicholas, and one that comes true only for seamen in a Post Office packet!"
"Not just the seamen," Ramage said. "What about the mate and the captain? I wonder how much they venture?"
"Well, the captain gets paid eight times as much as a seaman - that's about the figure, I think - and we can be sure he ventures in proportion, although he only makes three voyages a year. Eight times the seaman's £480 - hmm, that's £3,840, which is only £160 less than the Prime Minister is paid."
"And £840 a year more than the First Lord of the Admiralty," Ramage added.
"And no risk!" Yorke said. "That's the beauty of it."
"You're envious of the insurance," Ramage said lightly, trying to erase the bitterness in his mind.
"I most certainly am! These packetsmen are backing a horse so that they win whether the horse wins, loses or drops dead."
Suddenly Ramage felt goose-pimples spreading over his body in the darkness. The water was swilling past outside the hull; the whole ship was creaking, as it had done since it rounded the east end of Jamaica. But, for the first time, he did not hear it. He heard only his heart beating, and the faint echo of Yorke's voice saying: "... whether the horse wins, loses or drops dead."
It was absurd, but it had all the beauty of a simple plan. After a few minutes he relaxed and began to feel sleepy.
Next morning Ramage went up on deck to find seamen checking over the Lady Arabella's storm canvas, and was reminded that in Europe it was now halfway between autumn and winter. Curious how one never referred to winter and summer in the Tropics, only the hurricane and the dry season. Hurricane season if you were a sailor, rainy season if a soldier.
He shivered. The temperature was still dropping steadily, like water from a leaking roof: the days when the thermometer moved leisurely between eighty and eighty-five degrees were memories. In a week he would be thankful if it went above sixty-five. Sixty-five! In the Caribbean the water temperature rarely dropped below eighty...
Yorke joined him standing aft at the taffrail, watching the Lady Arabella's wake as she dipped and lifted her way over the swell waves. The sky was overcast and Stevens had not been able to get a sight the previous day. With the ship close-hauled there was enough wind to ensure that the helmsmen could not overhear their conversation.
Yorke prodded one of the two brass 9-pounder stern-chase guns with all the hard-bitten contempt of a horse coper. "We need a lot more of these 'Post Office guns'!"
"Instead we have those miserable 4-pounders..." Ramage gestured to the two guns each side. "Punt guns at best. Useful against wild duck."
"How can we fight?" Yorke asked. "Judging by the losses, We aren't fast enough to run, so the point is of more than academic interest now!"
"If we fight," and Ramage purposely emphasized the first word, "we just keep steering away from a privateer: keep her astern and bang away with these 9-pounders. They should carry farther than a privateer's bow-chasers. And we'd hope she hadn't any long 9-pounders on her broadside."
"It'd be suicide to let her get a broadside into us," Yorke commented.
Ramage nodded. "Calls for some smart tacking and wearing! Still, there might be a heavy sea running."
Yet like most events at sea, Ramage mused, it was impossible to dogmatize. Firing a broadside from a heavily rolling ship could be like shooting at snipe from the back of a runaway horse, yet a well-trained and cool gun's crew firing on the broadside would probably do more damage than a badly trained, excitable crew firing a stern-chase gun in the same conditions.
But for all that a couple of well-served stern-chase guns - particularly these long-barrelled "Post Office guns" - were like a kick from a mule's hind legs: very effective as long as the ship could keep stern-on to the enemy target. And that in turn meant the enemy (unless she had a good margin of speed) could only approach bow-on, and none of her broadside guns could be brought to bear.
If the enemy had a good margin of speed she could of course approach from astern and then range alongside; if only a slight margin she could suddenly turn away at the last moment, firing her broadside guns in turn as they bore. He knew that was what a large privateer would probably try to do to the Lady Arabella. It required skilful gunnery: the enemy gunners would see the target in their sights for only a second or two as their ship swung. On the other hand, every shot that hit was potentially more effective because a ship's transom and bow were very vulnerable compared with her sides: a shot smashing through it could sweep the whole length of the ship below deck, possibly damaging the rudder, steering gear or the masts below deck. Raking a ship, firing into her end on, whether through the transom or bow, was the most destructive method of attack.
Presumably that was why the Post Office equipped each packet with two 9-pounders as stern-chase guns: given the "turn and run" instructions, they were the best defence for a fleeing packet, since she could rake her pursuer.
Although the long barrels of the 9-pounders gave them the extra range, their very length and weight made them less useful as broadside guns because they were more difficult to handle: apart from the extra weight, they had to be run in farther so the men could get to the muzzle for sponging and loading. That in turn meant more room was needed, and the gun had to be hauled farther to run it out again ready to fire. All this meant more time.
Ramage guessed that in specifying long guns for stern-chase, the Post Office was gambling that any ship attacking a packet was likely to be a privateer, and the average privateer (they hoped) would be slower and armed with more but smaller guns, since privateers favoured close-range action. Smaller guns with shorter barrels certainly meant much less range, but they also meant easier handling, a higher rate of fire and more grape and canister shot fired into the victim. For the weight of one of the long 9-pounders, a privateer could probably fit a couple of 4-pounders. More than double the rate of fire but perhaps half the range ... That was why a highwayman preferred a brace of pistols, with a range of only a few paces, rather than a musket that could bowl a horse over at fifty yards: the highwayman's potential victim would be in a carriage only a few feet away.
Ramage knew only too well that privateer tactics were completely different from usual ship-to-ship actions: two lines of battle ships or frigates would fight it out with broadsides, and usually one would try to board the other only after she was badly damaged.
But privateers carried very large crews: one the size of the Lady Arabella would have more than a hundred men on board. Nor were they ordinary men: instead of being paid wages they were usually on a "share-of-the-profits" basis. At worst they were licensed pirates, regarding prisoners as an inconvenient nuisance. At best - well, little better than pirates. All too often one heard of a privateer running up the "bloody flag", the red flag that meant they would give no quarter; no prisoners would be taken, and the wounded would be slaughtered and tossed over the side with the men already killed. Few ships of war showed any mercy to a privateer: to avoid one escaping, a ship of war would not hesitate to "give her the stem", ramming the vessel to make sure of sinking her.