'Come over here - now take a good look at it', Ramage said without comment.
'Yus, I see what you mean, sir: the first Frog on board is going ter see fuses and guess ...'
'Throw one of those hatch boards over the side, put down two again - leaving the gap against the coaming - and then pull the canvas cover back in place across the hatch, putting a roll in the edge so that it doesn't touch the fuses. Then 1 doubt if anyone jumping on board would spot anything in the excitement - the fuses should have burnt enough that they'd have gone under the canvas and out of sight.'
'Come on, Arry', Stafford said, 'but be very, very careful wiv those two planks.'
Ramage looked again at his watch.
'Four minutes to go', he shouted. 'Topmen aloft, axemen to the foredeck, helmsman to the wheel, grapnel men to the sheets and braces!'
He wondered if anyone else had ever given such a bizarre series of orders. He watched the men moving about, sure footed as cats and as shadowy in the moonlight.
'Two minutes to go. Topmen, are you ready?'
There were shouts aloft from both masts.
'Axemen, are you ready?'
Three yells came aft from the foredeck.
'Grapnel men, are sheets and braces sorted out?'
Laughs and shouts gave him the answer.
He went back to the hatch and was startled by the change: it would take a very careful examination to reveal that anything had been done to the hold since it was stowed in France or Spain; five thin lines hung down a few inches, but in the darkness no one would notice them; the hatch looked battened down, ready for sea.
'Excellent, Stafford and Wells. You'd both make good smugglers!'
'Excise men, sir', protested Stafford. 'Always on the side of the law, we are.'
Jackson was waiting by the wheel and Ramage looked yet again at his watch.
'One minute to go ... Stand by, axemen. Right, cut the cable!'
A series of thuds as the blades bit through the rope, a hiss of the cable snaking out the hawse and a splash as it dropped into the sea told him the Merle was adrift.
'Foretopmen - lay out - let fall!'
The foretopsail tumbled down, the moon now high and bright enough to give the sail some colour.
Slowly he went through the sequence of orders that set the brig's topsails and then the courses; orders that were adapted to the few men available. Jackson at the wheel needed no orders; he had already noted the approximate position of the French 74, although she was now too far away to see and had probably furled all her sails so that she did not show up against the hills and cliffs.
Ramage went aft to the taffrail and looked down at the cutter. The boatkeeper was asleep, lying curled up in the sternsheets. The painter was hanging clear, free of kinks, and Ramage decided to leave him, telling Jackson to give the man a hail once they neared the enemy.
Inshore, lit up by the moon, Ramage could see the Muscade under way on a parallel course and imagined Southwick looking across to make sure the Merle was all right.
Jackson said quietly: 'It's made Mr Southwick ten years younger, sir.'
'Has it really?' Ramage was startled at the remark because he had been so busy during the last hour on board the Calypso that, although he had been giving orders to Southwick - not many, because they were not necessary - he had not had time to notice his appearance.
'You know how it does, once he knows he's going to be able to get into a fight, sir', Jackson reminded him.
'But this isn't going to be a fight', Ramage said, finding himself puzzled again. 'As I told you all before we left the Calypso, if the French capture us they'll treat the brigs as fireships and hang us all.'
'Yes, sir', Jackson said in the stolid way that seamen had perfected over the centuries when they answered officers who clearly did not understand the situation.
The men at the sheets and braces had the sails properly trimmed, the topmen were down on deck and the axemen were hoisting the headsails. Soon they too were sheeted home, and the only man doing any work on board the Merle was Jackson, who turned the wheel occasionally a spoke one way and then another as he watched the luffs of the sails.
'Harvest moon', Jackson noted laconically, nodding his head to the east, where the full moon was now a golden disc well clear of the hills.
'Yes, the seasons race by. We're getting old, Jackson!'
'I was fighting the British afore you were born, sir', Jackson said dryly.
'If you live to a real ripe old age', Ramage said with affected seriousness, 'you can come and work for me: I'll find you a simple job on the estate - like sawing up the big logs for winter.'
'How many fireplaces would that be, sir?'
'Only a dozen or so, and the kitchens', Ramage said.
'So I can look forward to an interesting and restful old age.'
'Yes', Ramage said, 'we both can. You can vary the length of the logs and I'll measure them. We need to stay alive, that's all.'
'I'll tell Stafford that if he turns up at the gates of Blazey Hall when he's seventy he might get a job, too.'
'As long as he brings his own saw.'
'Perhaps Rossi could start younger', Jackson said, his face expressionless. 'The Marchesa might like to hear him singing and cursing in Italian from time to time.'
Ramage ignored the implication of Jackson's remark, but it started him thinking. Stafford at the age of seventy - that would be in about forty years' time. By then young Lord Ramage would have inherited his father's title and be the ancient and eleventh Earl of Blazey, nearly seventy himself. Who would be the Countess of Blazey? Who would he have married? She might even be a widow by then. Or more likely Lord Ramage would, in the phrase so beloved by lawyers and biographers, have predeceased his father, his head long since knocked off by a roundshot, and the earldom of Blazey, the second oldest in the country, would have become extinct, or been revived and given to some shoddy politician who caught the King's fancy.
He walked aft to throw off the gloomy thoughts, though he felt no embarrassment or irritation: standing on top of 150 tons of gunpowder with fuses leading down into the hold, and steering for an enemy ship of the line, meant that anyone with the slightest imagination could be forgiven for a few passing reflections on mortality. Yet making a habit of reflecting on mortality was a quick way of driving a man to seek answers in the bottle. Anyway, he thought as he glanced down at the still sleeping boatkeeper, it is a glorious warm night with a steady breeze. Jackson's harvest moon, and an unsuspecting enemy just down the coast, with Southwick and the other brig abeam. Aitken and his convoy would by now be well on their way to Gibraltar safe from interference because they were sailing under the French flag ... The Calypso seemed distant, another world. Paolo would have enjoyed being on this expedition, but he was learning more in Aitken's convoy.
Ramage sat down on the breech of one of the two 6-pounder sternchase guns and looked at his watch. Two hours past midnight. The wind might have freshened a little, but the brigs were slow, and if the damned jibs did not stop slatting he would drop them. They had almost a soldier's wind so that for most of the time the headsails were blanketed by the forecourse. He knew he was now getting jumpy; when the slatting of sails irritated him, it was time to relax. He began walking forward to talk to the men.
Stafford and Arry - everyone, including Southwick and Aitken, always referred to him by that name - and the Marine guarding the ends of the fuses were sitting on the deck, their backs against the hatch coaming, and Arry was just finishing some lurid story concerning another man's wife in Scarborough: a woman, it seemed, possessed of inordinate desires and a weary and pliant husband.