The moon would be rising in the next ten minutes; already the sky to the eastward had a golden tinge. Ah, there were the boats leaving the fifth ship and heading for the shore.
'We've been lucky with the weather', Southwick said as the two men stood at the quarterdeck rail. 'With anything of a wind or sea, it'd take all night to get those men ashore. I wonder if the first of them have reached Cagliari yet.'
'Not unless they ran all the way: it must be sixty miles or more, whether they go south round the coast or north to Iglésias and then across to Cagliari. They'll keep to the tracks; I can't see any of them climbing rows and rows of hills.'
The boats were leaving the beach and at this distance, now the moon was over the hills and lighting the gulf, they looked like water beetles as they headed for the sixth ship, anchored close to Sant' Antioco. Ramage glanced over towards her and as he did so his eye caught sight of a dark patch to seaward.
Was it Isolotto la Vacca, the little rock just south of Sant' Antioco? No, he could see that, and this patch was small and much farther out to sea. A ship - perhaps one of Aitken's convoy returning?
'There's something out there, just south of Vacca', Ramage said to Southwick as he hurried aft to the binnacle box drawer to get the nightglass. He was back in a moment and resting his elbows on the capping of the rail to steady the glass.
'It's a ship...'
'What's her course, sir?'
'I think she's heading for the gulf... Blast this glass; it's hard to work out everything upside down ... Yes, she's on the starboard tack, the moon is lighting up her sails well. Not much wind out there... Yes, I have the line of her masts now ... she's probably heading for Cala Piombo. That's about twelve miles from here at the south end of the gulf, isn't it?'
'Yes', Southwick said. 'An easy anchorage to make for on a moonlit night 'cos you can pick up that tower.'
Ramage concentrated for another minute or two, knowing it was very easy to make mistakes with the nightglass because, apart from showing ships upside-down, it also made them appear to be on the opposite tack.
'Our lads will have a long row down there with boats', Southwick said. 'Still, if she sights us all anchored this end of the gulf, perhaps she'll change her mind and join us.'
'That might be a mixed blessing', Ramage said grimly. 'She's a French ship of the line.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
While Southwick sent away the two cutters and pinnace to take off the French from the three remaining merchant ships and the jolly boat rowed over to recall the gig and launch when they left the beach, the bosun's mates hurried through the Calypso sending the men to quarters.
Quickly and quietly they wetted and sanded the decks, put match tubs between the guns, half filling them with water, and set out larger tubs in which the sponges could be soaked when sponging out the guns. The gunner took the large, bronze magazine key from Ramage and went below to begin issuing flintlocks, lanyards, prickers and powder horns to each of the gun captains and be ready to issue cartridges to the powder boys.
Southwick was looking at his watch and cursing.
'We're lucky the dam' French 74 isn't steering for us; I've never known the men to take so long!'
'You must be patient', Ramage murmured, knowing his own reputation as the most impatient man in the ship. 'Don't forget we hardly have a gun captain left on board: nearly all the men are doing someone else's job, and they're not used to it.'
'Aye', Southwick admitted, 'but they've been exercised enough at exchanging jobs.'
'It's not the same. Telling every fourth man he's a casualty and making the rest move round is no good because each replacement sees what the previous man was doing.'
'I hadn't thought of that', Southwick said, and Ramage admitted the thought had only just come to him. In future - if there was a future, with a ship of the line coming into the gulf like the door of a trap closing - he would start all exercise at the great guns by jumbling the men's numbers. Or perhaps just subtracting three, so everyone had to change.
He swung the glass back to the French ship. She was still well outside the gulf and clewing up her main and forecourse, so she would enter the gulf in a leisurely fashion under topsails alone. In this light breeze! If her bottom had the usual crop of barnacles and she was in fact making for Cala Piombo, or even the one to the north of it, she had at least fifteen miles to sail, and she must be making only three or four knots.
All that made sense. If the French captain had never been into the gulf before, he was coming in under the worst possible conditions (barring a gale, of course): running in at night before a west wind meant he was coming up to a lee shore and sailing straight towards a full moon still low on the horizon, so that all the hills and cliffs were shadowy, making it very difficult to judge distances. The land at six miles would look as though it was only three miles away.
In fact, Ramage realized, almost giving an audible sigh of relief, the Calypso herself would be indistinguishable against the shadow of the cliffs and hills behind her, which from the Frenchman's position were higher than her masts. The French 74 would spot some of the merchant ships anchored much farther out, but they would be easily identifiable; just the coasting vessels she would expect to find anchored for the night in a place like the Golfo di Palmas.
With the nightglass Ramage could see the jolly boat, gig and launch returning to the Calypso from the beach and, a moment later, spotted one of the cutters leaving a merchantman. Only one? Then he detected movement beside another merchantman and saw the second cutter leave her and head for the shore. Either the men commanding the cutters were confident or disobedient, because both cutters were supposed to tackle a ship together ... Well, as long as there were no flares or flashes of musketry to attract the attention of the 74, it did not matter. It was, he thought, the sort of thing young Orsini would do - or Martin. Or, he admitted, himself when he was a midshipman or lieutenant.
Southwick now went through what Ramage knew only too well as his disapproving ritual. First he took off his hat and scratched his head; then he ran his fingers through his flowing white hair to straighten it out; then he jammed his hat back on again, rubbed his stomach with a circular motion, as though trying to assist his digestion, and then gave a sharp sniff.
'We cut and run, eh, sir, as soon as she's anchored?'
It was, of course, the only sensible thing to do: they would be able to see the 74 anchoring down at the other end of the gulf and the moment she had an anchor down and was busy furling sails the Calypso would cut her cable - indeed, they could start weighing now if they wanted to avoid losing both anchor and cable - let fall her topsails and courses, and beat out of the gulf, staying as far to the north as possible: shaving between the south end of Sant' Antioco and Isolotto la Vacca. The Frenchman, eight or ten miles to the south, would never catch them...
'Seems a pity, doesn't it?' Ramage said casually, trying to remember the details in Orsini's list of the main cargoes carried by the remaining merchant ships. Aitken had gone off with the six ships carrying the most valuable cargoes; those left here at anchor, and which he had been intending to burn tomorrow, were stowed with mundane things like the poor-quality powder, whose prize value Southwick had just been bemoaning.