He, Edward Southwick, had to admit that at the moment he was a Falstaff at the head of a rag-tag and bobtail party of seamen who, when mixed with the rest of the ship's company, did their jobs well enough: there was no need for the cook to have two legs and no reason why his mate should not be cross-eyed - except in a situation like this.
'Signal from the Golondrina, sir', a seaman called down.
Cursing, Southwick grabbed his hat and sword and hurried up the ladder.
'French flags, sir, I've worked it out as being this one.' He pointed to it in the signal book. 'I don't understand the lingo, sir, but the book mentions "charpentier". Perhaps it means send over the carpenter and his mates?'
Southwick nodded, and said: 'Just acknowledge it.' He did not need to know French to understand the message: it was a code arranged by Mr Ramage so that he and the other boarding parties could use the French system to send signals to the Calypso which, read by any other of the French ships, would seem innocent enough.
So Mr Ramage had secured the Golondrina and would be leaving young Kenton in command with his party while he took the Spanish crew on shore in the gig. He opened his telescope and a few moments later saw the gig appear round the stern of the Spanish ship, followed by the green cutter. He had to admit that Mr Ramage was right; with so many of the Calypso's boats rowing round apparently at random it all seemed quite natural and no one would notice. The mixture of French uniforms and old clothes, for example, was typically the way the French would do it, so that the gig making for the beach with ten or more Spaniards from the Golondrina looked no different from when she first went alongside with a boarding party from the Calypso. The substitution of Spaniards for boarding party was not noticeable.
The Golondrina would have been no problem because, of course, Mr Ramage spoke Spanish, but what about Aitken with the Sarazine?Still, the muzzle of a pistol pointing at you had a language all of its own.
He saw a movement of colour just as the seaman spoke: the same signal was being hoisted from the Sarazine and the launch was leaving her and rowing steadily along the coast: obviously Aitken had ordered his prisoners to be landed a long way from the Golondrina people.
Martin steered the red cutter another point to starboard. The brig Bergère had now anchored and he could distinguish the master, a fat man wearing a beret and looking as though he would be more at home sitting under an old plane tree in the place of a small town in the south of France, and the mate, a lanky man in a red shirt. He had counted nine seamen and petty officers, only one more than Orsini had noted, so the boy had done a good job.
He saw that both the Golondrina and Sarazine were flying the signal, so Mr Aitken and Kenton had taken their prizes.
It was easy enough to see that the Bergère brig had been built in England and, remembering what he had learned all the time he had been growing up as the son of the master shipwright at Chatham Dockyard, he guessed from her sheer and the shape of her stern that she had been built on the south coast not too far from Portsmouth. At Bursledon perhaps, or even East Cowes. Getting on for three hundred tons and down on her marks - he could see that she was pierced for six guns and carried them, 9-pounders from the look of it. According to Orsini her holds were full of carriages for land guns, harnesses, hides and a ground tier of guns to mount on the carriages.
There were fewer Frenchmen on deck now: with the anchor down and sails furled (bundled up, to his way of thinking) they probably thought their day's work was over.
'Stand by, men, I'm going alongside now.'
He pushed the tiller over with his shoulder as he crouched for a moment to check that his pistols were held tightly by the belt hooks.
One of his seamen was standing up in the bow, holding a boathook horizontally across his chest. No one in the Bergère showed the slightest interest; in fact the red cutter was now so close that a man in the brig would have to stand on the bulwark and peer down to see her.
He could scramble up the side - none of the other ships would see - or go on board in a dignified fashion, followed by his men and pretending until the last moment to be French. Mr Ramage had said they should get as far as possible with bluff, and from the indifference of the men in the Bergère, Martin was sure he and half a dozen men could get to the wheel without being challenged.
Then the cutter was alongside, the men using the oars without orders and then boating them, while the seamen forward hooked on to an eyebolt with the boathook. A second seaman climbed up the ship's side in a leisurely fashion with the painter while a third went up with the sternfast. Martin, mouth dry, his heart seeming to skid over cobblestones rather than beat regularly, jammed his hat (according to the label inside it belonged to someone called Pierre Duhamel, now prisoner in the Calypso) firmly on his head and climbed up the side battens.
For the last few seconds, as his head appeared over the level of the deck at the entryport, he looked round the Bergère and saw the fat man in the beret standing right aft and unaware that there was a boat alongside. Catching sight of Martin he gave a cheerful wave and bellowed for the mate, whose red shirt Martin could see on the foredeck.
Martin waved back and walked to the centreline to leave room for his boarding party, who were following him. As soon as the bosun's mate who was his second-in-command arrived beside him, Martin said casually: 'Everyone except the captain is forward. Secure them - watch the man in a red shirt, he's the mate.'
With that Martin strolled aft in what he felt was a casual manner, hoping the captain would watch him and not the boarding party going forward.
The Frenchman looked puzzled and called something to Martin, who grinned and waved reassuringly, increasing his pace. A few moments later there was a yell from forward and Martin guessed it was the red-shirted mate.
Three quick strides brought him up to the master with a pistol in his right hand. He stopped and pulled the hammer back with his thumb, the click seeming to sound like a small hammer on an anvil.
He then repeated, parrot-fashion, the French phrase that Mr Ramage had made him learn, which told the master that his ship was now a British prize and any attempt to raise an alarm would mean death. To emphasize 'mort' Martin jammed the pistol in the man's stomach, and as he bent forward in an instinctive reaction, Martin could not resist the schoolboy gesture of pulling the floppy beret down so that it covered the man's eyes, the band jamming across his nose.
With the captain momentarily blinded, Martin spun round to look forward in time to see the French mate collapsing into the arms of one of his own men, having just been punched in the stomach by the Calypso's burliest boarder. The rest of the French promptly raised their arms in surrender and were told by the bosun's mate, using sign language, to go down into the cutter.
Martin, wanting to keep him occupied until all the men were in the cutter, pushed the French captain so that he lost his balance and fell over. At that moment one of the Calypsos, who had climbed up on to the bulwarks, called out: 'The gig's coming, sir, with the captain!'
Martin waved an acknowledgement: it was part of the plan that the gig or red cutter would help convoy the boats taking crews to the beach. As soon as Martin saw the red-shirted man helped down into the cutter, he jerked the captain's beret upwards - and saw why the man wore it: he was completely bald. The Frenchman blinked in the sudden light, looked round for his men and saw Martin pointing to the entry port. He walked over to it, watched by the wary bosun's mate with a cocked pistol, and Martin jumped up on to the bulwarks.