'How are you heading, quartermaster?' Ramage called, more to bring himself back to the immediate present than a wish to know if the men at the wheel were on course.
'Nor'west a half west, sir', the helmsman said after glancing at the compass on the weather side of the binnacle.
And about 320 miles to go, Ramage thought to himself, if the wind does not head us so we have to start tacking.
Southwick supervised a cast of the log and came forward with the report that they were making six knots and the wind was freshening.
'We're not on the course the convoy took, sir', he said almost accusingly.
'Of course not. We're not going to the same place.'
'I assumed that', Southwick said heavily as he noted the time, speed, course and position on the slate. Later, the details would be transferred to the master's log and to the captain's journal, and in due course, as laid down in the Regulations and Instructions, both volumes would be forwarded to the Admiralty, where Southwick assumed they would join an enormous and dusty pile of other logs and journals, unread and merely recorded in some index.
He was sure they were unread because he had served in ships where, for example, a captain had ordered that a man be given nine dozen lashes of the cat-o'-nine-tails and this was quite openly recorded, although two dozen lashes were the legal limit a captain could award; more than that could be ordered only by a court martial. Yet there had been no letter from the Board Secretary expressing Their Lordships' displeasure, or even asking for more details.
No, a log or journal became important only if something went wrong, and something going wrong meant in effect losing the ship. Logs and journals were kept in case of trouble; a sort of coroner looking over your shoulder in the hope there would be an inquest.
Southwick's attitude towards life reflected in his cheerful face; he met tomorrow's problems tomorrow; he did not brood about them today. As he looked aft, to see if he had missed any details of the sketch he had made of the coast and which meant that not only had he carried out the instructions for masters but added to his own store of charts and views, he found himself startled that in the course of twenty-four hours, eight French merchant vessels and one 74-gun ship had been destroyed in the Golfo di Palmas, entirely due to the Calypso; six large prizes had been sent off to Gibraltar; and a small tartane had been kept as a tender to the Calypso.
He pencilled some more shading on to the sketch slightly to change the shape of the south sides of Monte Riciotto, one of the smaller mountains on San Pietro, and Monte Guardia dei Mori, the tallest.
Yes, Isolotto la Vacca also needed a little alteration. When he came to put on some water colours later, he must remember the thin, distant line of the marsh and salt pans, and also the white sand beach near Porto Pino. The whole stretch of coast seemed peaceful enough now: just one brig heeled over on the beach near the fishermen's village and another ripped open on a reef at the other end of the gulf - they were the only signs of their visit. By now the brig at the village would have been looted by the local people, and as the months and years passed they would gradually strip the wood from the ship, using it to build or repair their own fishing boats. The towers of various shapes, sizes and heights - he wondered when they had last been manned by soldiers. Mr Ramage said Sardinia had been Austrian until about 1720, and Southwick could imagine them keeping a sharp lookout. Who were they fighting in 1720?
He asked Ramage, who had coincidentally just remembered another piece of history. 'About a hundred years ago, around the turn of the century, Austria owned Sardinia, and Savoy had Sicily, and they exchanged them. I can't remember why - during the Spanish War, perhaps, because Spain occupied Sardinia for a while until she was defeated. Then in 1720 they exchanged again, Sardinia going back to Savoy, and Sicily back to Austria.'
Ramage turned and looked astern. The changing fortunes of Sardinia, with Sicily beyond, were something that a Briton found hard to comprehend. Imagine having the ruler of your home, the island on which your whole being existed, exchange it all for another island. Until 1702 a Sardinian would have been a Savoyard; then until 1717 an Austrian, then Spanish when Spain occupied the island for three years; and then suddenly he would be a Savoyard again when there was a second exchange.
He laughed to himself at the thought that for the last two hundred years it was unlikely one Sardinian in a thousand knew or cared who owned him; any tax collector toured that wild countryside at the extreme risk of his life ...
CHAPTER TWENTY
Just after dawn three days later Ramage stood alone at the quarterdeck rail watching as the sun rising slowly began to light up the Pyrenees showing ahead, through the network of the rigging and each side of the great sails. This stretch of the Mediterranean, from the tiny French port of Collioure at the foot of the northern slopes to the Spanish town of Rosas about twenty-five miles to the south, always seemed one of the most beautiful parts of the western Mediterranean. Here the Pyrenees, having started over on the cold Atlantic side, and except for a few passes effectively sealing Spain from France, now tumbled down to the Mediterranean, as if thankful to find warmer water and bluer skies.
Here was the border between France and Spain, a border acknowledged in words by Paris and Madrid but of little consequence to the Basques and the Catalans living astride it, speaking their own languages and both contemptuous of the two nations they regarded as trespassers.
Somewhere over there, among the mountains and the coastal passes at which Ramage now looked, Hannibal had marched two thousand years ago with his 50,000 men, 9000 cavalry and thirty-seven elephants, to stop the Romans invading Spain. Hannibal had originally come from Carthage, just south of Sardinia. Had he ever visited the Golfo di Palmas?
'That'll be Cap Béar on the larboard bow, with Port Vendres just to the north', Southwick said, having just come up from below. 'With the glass you might pick out two towers, one low down and the other high up.'
Ramage nodded: he knew this part of the coast well.
'Ah, the sun is just catching the snow on the top of Le Canigou, sir. Over 9000 feet high, that mountain.'
'And a blessing to navigators', Ramage commented. 'An unmistakable shape with those double peaks, and snow for good measure.'
'That's the trouble, the snow makes it difficult to get "a good measure"', Southwick grumbled. 'Taking an altitude of Canigou to find the distance off is difficult because with any sun the snow makes it next to impossible to distinguish the peak. Still, no sun usually means the peak is in cloud . . .'
'You need a tape measure, not a sextant', Ramage teased.
Sitting at his desk, Ramage took out the French signal book and again turned to the list of semaphore stations. The entry he sought was brief:
'No. 28, Collioure (Pointe del Mich) ... Albert St Laurent.'
The reference to Pointe del Mich intrigued him. According to some notes in old sailing directions belonging to Southwick, Pointe del Mich was the headland on the south side of the entrance to the narrow bay which, lying in the northern shadow of the Pyrenees, looked as if it had been made by a giant taking a bite out of the coast just where the mountains ended and the land rolled and then flattened into sand dunes and marshes, passing Perpignan and extending all the way round the Gulf of Lions to Marseilles. Then a glance at the chart made it clearer - Pointe del Mich stuck out to sea just far enough to be in sight of the next station to the north, number twenty-seven, and the one to the south, number twenty-nine, Port Vendres - the old 'Port of Venus' of Roman times, well sheltered and, just now, well defended.