'Can I tell the men, sir?'
'Yes. I wonder if she was a flagship.'
Southwick paused, took off his hat to run his fingers through his hair, and then gave a sniff to indicate his irritation. 'We'll never know that now, unless the Moniteur reports it. That's the worst of blowing a ship to pieces; one doesn't get prisoners.'
The boats left the Calypso and went to the anchored merchant ships. Ramage, thoroughly exasperated by the gunner, had given him those carrying powder but, weakening at the last moment, had told him he could scuttle them instead of blowing them up.
Ramage had noticed that at the north end of the gulf, to leeward of several of the merchant ships and near some huts, a group of fishermen were watching. At least, he assumed they were fishermen because they were near some fishing boats drawn up on the beach.
The fishermen must only just be scraping a living. The soil was barren; apart from olives, he had seen a few fig trees and vine terraces, so the harvest had to come from the sea. One of the French brigs to be scuttled carried a general cargo - everything from pots and pans to bales of hides, olive oil to sugar.
He had told Southwick to leave the brig to him, and not to be surprised if he saw it set a foresail. Taking Jackson, Stafford and a dozen seamen with him in the gig, he went over to the brig, saw that in fact she was lying to windward of the flat stretch of shore that the fishermen had taken as their village, and ordered the brig's cable to be cut.
With the gig towing astern, they watched as the brig drifted inshore under the windage on her hull and span. They were a mile from the beach when a random current, flowing between the mainland and the island of Sant' Antioco, caught her and began to carry her northwards.
'Let fall the foretopsail', Ramage said, 'and get it drawing. Jackson, take the wheel and steer for the fishermen's beach.'
The seamen were going about their various tasks but obviously they were puzzled, and Ramage shouted to them: 'Those fishermen over there: this ship represents a king's ransom to them, and we were going to scuttle her. We might just as well let her run up on the beach - no one will ever get her off again, and the fishermen can take their pickings as a reward for not bothering us. They're neutral, anyway.'
Were they? Ramage suddenly found himself far from sure. About eighty years ago Savoy and Austria exchanged Sicily and Sardinia, so Sardinia now belonged to Savoy. But Savoy was at present under the French ... Anyway, the only practical attitude to adopt was that anyone who did not shoot at you was friendly or neutral, and as a convoy anchorage it did not matter.
Jackson was far from impressed. 'If we landed on their beach as survivors they'd have the shirts off our backs, sir; I can't see them giving us dinner.'
'Think about all those Frenchmen we landed, then; they won't have been given a rotten fishhead or an empty wine fiasco to help them on the road to Cagliari.'
'That's true, sir.' The thought brought a grin to Jackson's face.
'And everyone speaking to them in Italian ...'
Jackson nodded; he tended to forget the captain spoke good Italian, and the effect that this could have.
'Can you put on a Sardinian accent, sir?'
'The Sardi... in this island alone there are probably two dozen different accents, quite apart from the fact it was owned by Austria until eighty years ago. Certainly I couldn't imitate the accent of this place, Sant' Antioco. Centuries ago they came from Genoa down to somewhere on the Barbary coast opposite here, then moved here when the Algerines oppressed them. They probably use as many Arabic words as Italian. Or archaic Italian words no longer used today.'
Ramage felt slightly irritated by Jackson: until five minutes ago he was concerned only with being generous to some Sardi fishermen, and that in turn had led him to recall the Genovesi who, before the Spanish Armada sailed for England, went to North Africa; to Tabarka, Zembra and Djerba, and the Kerkenna Islands near by, in the constant hunt for new fishing grounds. Moslems, Normans, Christians, Catalans, Spaniards - all at some time or another had fought to get the tunny, the coral from the reefs, the slaves and the grain to be found in the triangle formed by Sicily, Sardinia and the Barbary coast. The language resulting over the centuries from such a mixing would be fascinating - and yet the nearest he could get to hear it now was letting this brig run ashore. There was so much of interest, so much to learn - and so little opportunity ...
As soon as he was sure the wind would carry the brig down to the waiting fishermen - it seemed they had guessed what was about to happen - Ramage told Jackson to lash the wheel, left the topsail drawing, and ordered his men down into the gig.
Two hours later all the boats were back at the Calypso and being hoisted on board, and Southwick was already conjecturing whether the Calypso would catch up with Aitken's convoy.
'We'll be sailing less than twenty-four hours after them, sir', he commented.
Was it only twenty-four hours ago that Aitken sailed out past Isolotto la Vacca? The thought surprised Ramage, who, working backwards in time, found Southwick was right. It seemed more like a week.
'I can guess the course Aitken will take, sir, because I gave him some tips about the currents along the Barbary coast. There's a nasty inset into most of those big bays.'
'The course from here to Europa Point is fairly direct', Ramage said sarcastically: 'west by north, about 700 miles, and if we were bound for Gibraltar, I'm sure we'd sight them.'
'Aren't we going to Gibraltar, sir?' Southwick was obviously startled.
'Yes, but we have some things to do first.'
His satisfaction at surprising Southwick was short-lived; the master's face took on the smile of some benevolent and overindulgent bishop; all he lacked, Ramage thought, was a cope, mitre and crozier. 'Good', the master said, 'if there's some action I'll get a good look in now we've no lieutenants on board.'
Ramage found himself strangely reluctant to leave the Golfo di Palmas; like so many other gulfs and bays in the Mediterranean, it held impressions of all the civilizations that had passed through it. Ramage was reminded of a piece of canvas with many portraits painted one on top of the other so that from different angles and in different lights one could see traces of the earlier works.
As the Calypso stretched past the Isolotto la Vacca with a brisk south wind and all plain sail set and drawing, Ramage looked astern at the Passe Partout, slicing along in the Calypso's wake.
'Discipline in that ship for the next few days', Ramage commented to Southwick, 'is going to be fierce!'
'Why, sir? Jackson's a mild enough fellow.'
'Yes, but first Martin and then Orsini worked hard to clean her up: deck holystoned and a shine put on anything that would take a polish. Jackson doesn't know when Martin or Orsini will be on board again, but he's going to make sure she's sparkling.'
'Just to show them how it should be done!' The idea appealed to Southwick. 'Pity we can't put the gunner on board as Jackson's second-in-command.'
'He'd beat Jackson', Ramage said, and knew exactly why. Jackson had enormous initiative, was not the slightest bit frightened of responsibility, and in action appeared never to have heard the word fear. But one word he did know was contempt; if he was contemptuous of a man, then that man ceased to exist; he became what in the West Indies was called a zombie, a dead man walking. Jackson would go about his business in the Passe Partout as though the gunner did not exist and the gunner, being the man he was, would be delighted, not insulted; he would probably start painting black lacquer on the guns, or passing all the roundshot through a gauge to make sure they were completely spherical, with no bumps of rust.